from 1623 till 1910) learned pedants and others have looked at the dummy without perceiving the trick that had been played upon them.

B. I. then proceeds to say:—"O, could he but have drawne his wit as well in brasse, as he hath hit his face." Hit, at that period, was often used as the past participle of hide, with the meaning hid or hidden, exactly as we find in Chaucer, in "The Squieres Tale," where we read, ii. 512, etc.,

Right as a serpent hit him under floures

Til he may seen his tyme for to byte.

This, put into modern English prose, means, Just as a serpent hid himself under the flowers until he might see his time to bite.

I have already explained how B. I. tells the reader not to look at the picture, but at the book; perhaps the matter may be still more clear if I give a paraphrase of the verses.

TO THE READER.

The dummy that thou seest set here

Was put instead of Shake-a-speare;

Wherein the graver had a strife

To extinguish all of Nature's life.

O, could he but have drawn his mind

As well as he's concealed behind

His face; the Print would then surpasse

All, that was ever writ in brasse.

But since he cannot, do not looke

On his mask'd Picture, but his Booke.

"Do out" appears as the name of the little instrument something like a pair of snuffers, called a "douter," which was formerly used to extinguish candles. Therefore, I have correctly substituted "extinguish" for "out-do." At the beginning I have substituted "dummy" for "figure" because we are told that the figure is "put for" (that is, put instead of) Shakespeare. "Wit" in these lines means absolutely the same as "mind" which I have used in its place, because I feel sure that it refers to the fact that upon the miniature of Bacon in his eighteenth year, painted by Hilliard in 1578, we read:—"Si tabula daretur digna animum mallem," the translation of which is—"If one could but paint his mind!"

This important fact which can neither be disputed nor explained away, viz., that the figure upon the title page of the first Folio of the plays in 1623 put to represent Shakespeare is a doubly left-armed and stuffed dummy, surmounted by a ridiculous putty-faced mask, disposes once and for all of any idea that the mighty plays were written by the drunken, illiterate clown of Stratford-on-Avon, and shows us quite clearly that the name "Shakespeare" was used as a left-hand, a pseudonym, behind which the great author, Francis Bacon, wrote securely concealed. In his last prayer, Bacon says, "I have though in a despised weed procured the good of all men," while in the 76th "Shakespeare" sonnet he says:—

Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keepe invention in a noted weed.

That every word doth almost sel my name

Shewing their birth, and where they did proceed.

Weed signifies disguise, and is used in that sense by Bacon in his "Henry VII.," where he says, "This fellow... clad himself like an Hermite and in that weede wandered about the countrie."

It is doubtful if at that period it was possible to discover a meaner disguise, a more "despised weed," than the pseudonym of William Shakespeare, of Stratford-on-Avon, Gentleman. Bacon also specially refers to his own great "descent to the Good of Mankind" in the wonderful prayer which is evidently his dedication of the "Immortal Plays."

THIS IS THE FORM AND RULE OF OUR
ALPHABET

May God, the Creator, Preserver, and Renewer of the Universe,

protect and govern this work, both in its ascent to his Glory, and

in its descent to the Good of Mankind, for the sake of his Mercy

and good Will to Men, through his only Son (Immanuel). God

us.

In the "Promus," which is the name of Bacon's notebook now in the MSS. department of the British Museum, Bacon tells us that "Tragedies and Comedies are made of one Alphabet." His beautiful prayer, described as the Form and Rule of our Alphabet, was first published in 1679 in "Certaine Genuine Remains of Sir Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam and Viscount St. Albans," where it appears as a fragment of a book written by the Lord Verulam and entituled, "The Alphabet of Nature." In the preface we are told that this work is commonly said to be lost. "The Alphabet of Nature" is, of course, "The Immortal Plays," known to us as Shakespeare's, which hold "The Mirror up to Nature," and are now no longer lost, but restored to their great author, Francis Bacon.

BACON SHEWN BY CONTEMPORARY TITLE PAGES TO BE THE AUTHOR OF THE SHAKESPEARE PLAYS.

I HAVE shewn on pp. 6 to 9 that the title page of the 1623 Folio of the Plays known as Shakespeare's is adorned with a supposed portrait of Shakespeare, which is, in fact, a putty-faced mask supported on a stuffed dummy wearing a coat with two left arms, to inform us that the Stratford clown was a "left-hand," a "dummy," a "pseudonym," behind which the great Author was securely concealed.

This fact disposes once and for all of the Shakespeare myth, and I will now proceed to prove by a few contemporary evidences that the real author was Francis Bacon.

I place before the reader on page 11 a photographically enlarged copy of the engraved title page of Bacon's work, the De Augmentis, which was published in Holland in 1645. "De Augmentis" is the Latin name for the work which appeared in English as the Advancement of Learning.

This same engraved title page was for more than one hundred years used for the title page of Vol. I. of various editions of Bacon's collected works in Latin, which were printed abroad. The same subject, but entirely redrawn, was also employed for other foreign editions of the De Augmentis, but nothing in any way resembling it was printed in England until quite recently, when photo-facsimile copies were made of it for the purpose of discussing the authorship of the "Shakespeare" plays. In this title page we see in the foreground on the right of the picture (the reader's left) Bacon seated with his right hand in brightest light resting upon an open book beneath which is a second book (shall we venture to say that these are the De Augmentis and the Novum Organum?), while with his left-hand in deepest shadow, Bacon is putting forward a mean man, who appears to the careless observer to be running away with a third book. Let us examine carefully this man. We shall then perceive that he is clothed in a goat skin. The word tragedy is derived from the Greek word tragodos, which means an actor dressed in a goat skin. We should also notice that the man wears a false breast to enable him to represent a woman; there were no women actors at the time of Shakespeare's plays. The man, therefore, is intended to represent the tragic muse. With his left hand, and with his left hand only, he grips strongly a clasped sealed, concealed book, which by the crossed lines upon its side (then, as now, the symbol of a mirror) is shewn to be the "Mirror up to Nature," the "Book of the Immortal Plays," known to us under the name of Shakespeare, which, together with Bacon's De Augmentis and his Novum Organum, makes up the "Great Instauration," by which Bacon has "procured the good of all men."