found in the slender volume than a narrative of the few facts known about Vergil's life, and an analysis of and commentary upon his poems. In a brief but luminous introductory chapter, the author points out the essential characteristics of Greek and Roman poetry, and the features in which it differs most widely from that of our modern world; and in another chapter, equally valuable, he discusses the relations between literature and literary men and the early Roman Empire, and the "General Characteristics of the Poetry of the so-called Augustan Age." The narrative and explanatory chapters on Vergil's life and poems contain all the accessible information that the student or reader will care to have, and are extremely interesting; and the chapters on the general characteristics of Vergil's poetry, and on Vergil as a poet of nature, are full of the most instructive and luminous criticism, which has a value much wider than the topic which suggests it. Practical suggestions regarding the text of Vergil will be found helpful both to teachers and to students, and a table of dates enables us to place Vergil in his proper place in that great sequence of events of which history proper is the record. is ... Full of the racy charm of the frontier Mr. J. Mortimer Murphy's "Sporting Adventures in the Far West."* The author has been "a wanderer for nearly seven years in the far West," and his object in writing the present work was to give "the general characteristics, the haunts, habits, and the best method of hunting the largest class of game" to be found there. As his facts are either derived from his own personal experience, or based on that of some of the most famous scouts and hunters of the frontier, they are doubtless entirely trustworthy; and the record of them is enlivened with numerous stories of hair-breadth escapes and stirring adventures. This latter feature renders the book interesting to those who are neither sportsmen nor tourists, and who will never, probably, find themselves among the scenes described; but it is painful to read of the butchery (it would be absurd to dignify it with the name of "sport") that is being carried on indiscriminately among all kinds of game. After Mr. Murphy's description of the murderous methods often employed, one can no longer be surprised that the buffalo is so nearly exterminated; the wonder is that any of the larger wild animals are left in any of the regions accessible to so-called "sportsmen." .... After reading the third and concluding volume of the "Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat," we find no reason to modify the opinion expressed in our review of the first volume, namely, that the work deserves a place beside the "Memoirs of Saint * Sporting Adventures in the Far West. By John Mortimer Murphy. Illustrated. New York: Harper & Brothers. 12mo, pp. 469. + Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat. 1802-1808. With a Preface and Notes by her Grandson, Paul de Rémusat. Translated from the French by Mrs. Cashel Hoey and John Lillie. In Three Volumes. Vol. III. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. Simon" for value and far above them for intrinsic interest. The interior life of a court has never been revealed so frankly or described so vividly and picturesquely; and all future writers who may attempt to deal with the character or times of Napoleon will find it necessary to accept Madame de Rémusat as one of the chief authorities. The period covered by the third volume is that from 1806 to 1808, and the principal events dealt with, aside from the daily life of the palace, are the establishment of the dependent kingdoms and duchies with which Napoleon buttressed his throne, the campaign of Jena, the first war with Russia, the peace of Tilsit, the first projects of the divorce from Josephine (1807-1808), and the beginning of the war with Spain. With the opening incidents of the latter event the Memoirs come to an abrupt close; but, though the reader will keenly regret this, his regret will be tempered by two considerations: first, as Madame de Rémusat retired from the court with Josephine on the divorce of the latter in 1810, her reminiscences of the declining years of the Empire could not have possessed that intimate charm that characterizes the portion we have; second, the son of Madame de Rémusat, who was entirely in her confidence, appends to the work a tolerably adequate summary of what she would have had to say concerning the principal occurrences which she did not live to treat of. The repertory of vocal musicians will be considerably and acceptably enlarged by the collec tion of "Songs from the Published Writings of Al fred Tennyson, set to Music by Various Composers."* Of the forty-five songs which the volume contains, thirty-five are new and original compositions prepared expressly for it; and the list of composers includes, along with many others almost equally eminent, the names of Gounod, Goldschmidt, Liszt, Raff, Hueffer, Joachim, Pinsuti, Blumenthal, Sir Julius Benedict, John Hullah, and Arthur Sullivan. Thirty-nine composers in all contribute to the volume; and, as an English reviewer has said, "a student of lyrical composition may here trace and compare with each other not only the schools of Germany, France, and England, but also the parties of the 'future,' the present, and the past." Most of the finer short poems of Tennyson are comprised in the selection, and, unlike the majority of such compilations, the poetry is not a mere vehicle for the music, but has an independent value and charm of its own. Of "Tears, Idle Tears," there are two distinct settings; and some few pieces which were evidently better suited to polyphonous treatment have been set as part-songs. The volume is issued by the publishers in substantial and attractive style, with a portrait of Tennyson, and original illustrations by Fredericks, Reinhart, Winslow Homer, and Jessie Curtis. For the benefit of musicians we may add that the songs are printed in the treble clef. * Songs from the Published Writings of Alfred Tennyson. Set to Music by Various Composers. Edited by W. G. Cusins. New York: Harper & Brothers. Royal 4to. APPLETONS' JOURNAL. A MAGAZINE OF GENERAL LITERATURE. NEW SERIES.] JUNE, 1880. [No. 48. BE THE SHAKESPEAREAN MYTH. CONCLUDING PAPER.*-EXTRA SHAKESPEAREAN THEORIES. "To save a Mayd St. George a Dragon slew- ETWEEN the affirmative theory of the Stratfordian authorship, then, and the demonstration of its utter impossibility and absurdity, there remains but the single barrier of the Jonsonian testimony, contained in the copy of verses entitled "To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us," written by Mr. Ben Jonson and prefixed to the famous folio of 1623. If this testimony should ever be ruled out as incompetent, there would actually remain nothing except to lay the Shakespearean hoax away, as gently as might be, alongside its fellows in the populous limbo of exploded fallacies. However, let it not be ruled out merely on the ground that it is in rhyme. We have no less an authority than Littleton-"Auctoritas Philosophorum, Medicorum et Poetarum sunt in causis allegandæ et tenendæ "t-to the effect that the testimony, even of poets, is sometimes to be received. It is to be ruled out rather by a process akin to impeachment of the witness-by its appearing that the witness, elsewhere in the same controversy, testifies to a state of facts exactly opposite. For the truth is that, whatever Ben Jonson felt moved to say about his "pal" William Shakespeare, whenever, as a friend, he "dropped into poetry," he was considerably more careful when he sat himself down to write "cold prose." Just as Bully Bottom, fearing lest a lion should "fright the ladies" and "hang every mother's son" of his troupe, devised a prologue * See "Appletons' Journal" for February and June, 1879. +"Co. Lit.," 264 A. VOL. VIII.-31 to explain that the lion was no lion, but only Snug the Joiner, "a man as other men are,” so Master Bully Jonson, however tropical and effusive as to his contemporary in his prosody, in his prologue in prose was scrupulous to leave only the truth behind him. Mountains-Ossa piled on Pelion-of hearsay and lapse of time, oceans of mere opinion and "gush," would, of course, amount to precisely nothing at all when ranged alongside of the testimony of one single, competent, contemporary eye-witness. No wonder the Shakespeareans are eager to subpoena Ben Jonson's verses. But, all the same, they are marvelously careful not to subpoena his prose. And yet this prose is extant and by no means inaccessible. When Jonson died in 1637, he left behind him certain memoranda which were published in 1640, and are well known as "Ben Jonson's Discoveries." One of these memoranda— for the work is in the disjointed form of a commonplace-book of occasional entries—is devoted to the eminent men of letters in the era spanned by its author's own acquaintance or familiarity. It runs as follows: Cicero is said to be the only wit that the people of Rome had equalled to their empire. Imperium par imperio. We have had many, and in their several ages (to take in the former sæculum), Sir Thomas More, the elder Wiat, Henry, Earl of Surry, Chalo ner, Smith, Eliot, B. Gardiner, were, for their times, admirable; and the more because they began eloquence with us. Sir Nicholas Bacon was singular and almost alone in the beginning of Elizabeth's time. Sir Philip Sidney and Mr. Hooker (in different matter) grew great masters of wit and language, and in whom all vigour of invention and strength of judgment met. The Earl of Essex, noble and high, and Sir Walter Raleigh, not to be contemned, either for judgment or style. Sir Henry Saville, grave and truly lettered. Sir Edwin Sandys, excellent in both. Lord Egerton, a grave and great orator, and best when he was provoked. But his learned and able, but unfortunate successor, is he that hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome.* In short, within this view, and about this time, were all the wits born that could honour a language or help study. Now things daily fall; wits grow downward and eloquence grows backward. So that he may be so named and stand as the mark and μŋ of our language.t Only fourteen years before, this Ben Jonson had published the verses which made William Shakespeare. Only fourteen years before he had asserted-what the world has taken his word for, and never questioned from that day to this-that his best beloved" William Shakespeare had been the "soul of the age"-"not for an age, but for all time"--and his works "such as neither man nor muse can praise too much." We have no means of knowing the precise date at which Ben Jonson's grief for his dead friend cooled, and his feelings experienced a change. But he leaves behind him, at his death, this unembellished memoranda, this catalogue "of all the wits" living in his day, who, in his opinion, "could honour a language or help study," and in this catalogue he inserts no such name as William Shakespeare-William Shakespeare, the name, not only of the "soul" and epitome of all that-only about fourteen years ago-he had deemed worth mentioning among men "born about this time"; but of his late most intimate and bosom friend! Had the "Discoveries" preserved an absolute silence concerning William Shakespeare, the passage we have quoted might, perhaps, have been considered a studied and deliberate slur on his dead friend's memory, on the part of Jonson, made for reasons best known to Jonson himself. But they are not silent. They devote a whole paragraph to William Shakespeare-but in the proper place, that is to say, the wits who could honor a language or help study," but among the author's not among * Judge Holmes (" Authorship of Shakespeare," third edition, p. 650) italicizes these words to point the allusion to Bacon, and to notice that the passage in "The Discoveries," immediately preceding the above, is a direct allusion to Bacon, while the phrase "insolent Greece and haughty Rome" occurs in line thirty-nine of the verses eulogistic of William Shakespeare. +"Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter as they have flowed out of his Daily Readings, or had their Reflux to his Peculiar Notion of the Time." By Ben Jonson. "Works," vol. vii., by Peter Whalley, P. 99. personal acquaintance. This is all there is of this paragraph as to the real William Shake speare: I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted out a thousand!" which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted. And to justify mine own candour (for I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry, as much as any). He was (indeed) honest and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasie, brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be. stopped. Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power, would the rule of it had been so too! Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter; as when he said in the person of Cæsar-one speaking to him "Cæsar, thou dost me wrong;" he replied, "Cæsar never did wrong, but with just cause," and such like; which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than pardoned.* That is every word which a man who “loved him" could say of William Shakespeare!—that he was a skilled and careful penman, "never blotting out a line"; that he talked too fast, sometimes, and had to be checked; that, in playing the part of Cæsar on the stage, somebody interpolated the speech, "Cæsar, thou dost me wrong," and he made a bull in response;† and that he (Jonson) wished he (Shakespeare) had blotted out a thousand of his lines. Blot out a thousand Shakespearean lines!—a thousand of the priceless lines of the peerless book we call 'Shakespeare"! Fancy the storm which would follow such a Vandal proposition to-day! Ben Jonson does not specify which thousand he would have expurgated, but would be satisfied with any thousand, taken anywhere at random out of the writings of his "soul of the age," the man "not of an age, but for all time." And yet it is on the uncorroborated word of this man Jonson that we build monuments to the Stratford lad, and make pilgrimages to his birthplace and worship his ashes, and quarrel about the spelling of his name! If there is not a strong smack of patronage in this prose allusion to Shakespeare, we confess ourselves unable to detect its flavor. Very possibly the fact was that, so far from having been an admirer of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson saw through his pretensions, and only through *"Works," cited ante, vol. vii., p. 91. + Possibly this may have occurred in playing the very version of the "Cæsar" we now possess, though there are, of course, no such lines to be found there. policy sang his praises against the stomach of Though need make many poets, and some such One such to-day, as other plays should be; over some of his old verses for the occasion, which was all he felt it justified. Is it possible that the ideal Shakespeare, the mighty miracleworking demigod, is only the accidental creation of a man who was poking fun at a shadow? Let us not proceed to such a violent surmise, but return to a serious consideration of Mr. Ben Jonson's unimpassioned prose. If the paragraph from the "Discoveries" last above quoted-which estimates William Shakespeare precisely as history estimates him, namely, as a clever fellow, and a player in one of the earliest theatres in London-is not to be regarded as a confession that Ben Jonson's verses were written (or rewritten) more out of generosity to his late friend's memory-rather in the exuberance of a poetic license of apotheosis-than with a literal adherence to truth,* then it must be conceded that the result is such a facing both ways as hangs any Jonsonian testimony in perfect equilibrium as to the Shakespearean controversy, and entitles Ben Jonson himself, as a witness for anybody or to anything, to simply step down and out. For, admitting that his poetry is just as good as his prose-and probably the Shakespeareans would care to assert no more than that Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to it is a legal maxim that a witness who swears please.' Ben says this himself-in the prologue to his "Every Man in his Humour."* And yet this is the "immortal Shakespeare" whom Ben “honours this side idolatry," but whom we are not fearful of passing the bounds of idolatry in worshiping to-day. Ben Jonson was an overworked rhymester, "Though need make many poets, and some such for both sides swears for neither; and a rule of common law no less than of common sense that his evidence must be ruled out, since no jury can be called upon to believe and disbelieve one and the same witness at the same time. But, since numberless good people are suspicious of rules of law as applied to evidence, regarding them as over-nice, finical, and as framed rather to keep out truth than to let it in, let us waive the legal maxim, and admit the Jonsonian testimony to be one single, consistent block of contemporary evidence. But, no sooner do we do this, than we find needs only a little hammering over to become the ourselves straightway floundering in a slough of "While I confess thy writings to be such As neither man nor muse can praise too much " of the mortuary verses which—as we say-made * Again, in the "Induction" to his "Bartholomew absurdities far greater, it seems to us, than any we have yet encountered. To illustrate: It is necessary to the Shakespearean theory that in the been not only a man, but a genius, a wit, and a days of Elizabeth and James there should have that all these—man, genius, wit, and poet-should poet, of the name of William Shakespeare; and have been one and the same individual. Taking all the Jonsonian testimony, prose and poetry, together, such an individual there was, and his name was William Shakespeare, as required. But-still following Jonson's authority — at the same period and in the same town of London *A confession, say the Baconians, that Jonson, as long as Bacon lived, was eager to serve him by shouldering on his incognito-in poetry-while he was under no compunction to do so in his own posthumous remains. See post, ii., the Baconian theory. there was a certain gentleman named Bacon, who was "learned and able," and who had, moreover, "filled up all numbers-and" in the same days "performed that which may be compared either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome." We have, then, not only a "wit and poet" named Shakespeare, but a "wit and poet" named Bacon; and, since Jonson is nowhere too modest to admit that he himself was a "wit and poet," we have, therefore, actually not one but three of a kind, at each other's elbows in London, in the golden age of English literature. We have already seen that, of this trio, twoBacon and Shakespeare, if we are to believe the Shakespeareans were personally unknown to each other. It is worth our while to pause right here, and see what this statement involves. They are all three-Bacon, Jonson, and Shakespeare-dwelling in the same town at the same moment; are all three writers and wits, earning their living by their pens. Ben Jonson is the mutual friend. He is of service to both - he translates Bacon's English into Latin for him,* and writes plays for William Shakespeare's stage, and, as we have seen, he ultimately becomes the Boswell of both, and runs from one to the other in rapture. His admiration for Bacon, on the one hand (according to his prose), amounts to a passion; his admiration for Shakespeare, on the other hand (according to his poetry), amounts to a passion. He declares (in prose) that Bacon "hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue, which may be compared and preferred either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome"; he declares (in poetry) of Shakespeare that he may be left alone ". . . for comparison Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome And yet he never, while going from one to the other, mentions Shakespeare to Bacon or Bacon to Shakespeare; never "introduces" them or brings them together; never gives his soul's idol Bacon any "orders" to his soul's idol Shakespeare's theatre, that this absolutely inimitable Bacon (who has surpassed insolent Greece and haughty Rome) may witness the masterpieces of this absolutely inimitable Shakespeare (who has likewise surpassed insolent Greece and haughty Rome); this Boswell of a Jonson, go-between of two men of repute and public character, travels from one to the other, sings the praises * Jonson assisted Dr. Hackett, afterward Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry, in translating the essays of Lord Bacon into Latin. (Whalley, "Life of Ben Jonson," Vol. I. of works, cited ante.) Jonson was at this time "on terms of intimacy with Lord Bacon."-(W. H. Smith, "Bacon and Shakespeare," p. 29.) of each to the world outside (using the same figures of speech for each), and, in the presence of each, preserves so impenetrable a silence as to the other, that of the two public characters themselves each is absolutely ignorant of the other's existence! And yet they ought to have been close friends, for they borrowed each other's verses, and loaned each other paragraphs to any extent. Persons there have been who asserted, as we shall see, on merely the internal evidence of their writings, that Bacon and 'Shakespeare" were one and the same man, and that what appeared to be "parallelisms" and coincidences in Bacon and Shakespeare" were thus to be accounted for. But, admitting their separate identity, it is absolutely certain that the natural philosopher borrowed his exact facts from the comedies of the playwright, while the playwright borrowed the speeches for his comedies from the natural philosopher, which looks very much like friendship, or at least a speaking acquaintance. For, as we shall see further on, some of these "parallelisms" are not coincidences, but something very like identities. It will not lighten this new difficulty to rule out the prose and leave in the poetry, for we can not annihilate Francis Bacon nor yet William Shakespeare from their places in history. If, however, the Jonsonian poetry were wiped out, the Jonsonian prose would receive at least a negative corroboration, as follows: At the same time that Bacon and Shakespeare are living, unknown to each other respectively, in London, there also dwell there three other gentlemen-Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser, and Sir Tobie Matthew. We therefore actually have four wellknown gentlemen of the day, in London, gentlemen of elegant tastes-poets, men about town, critics who, if the town were being convulsed by the production at a theatre of by far the most brilliant miracles of genius that the world had ever seen, ought not, in the nature of things, to have been utterly uninformed as to the circumstance. We do not add to this list Southampton, Essex, Rutland, Montgomery, and the rest, because these latter have left no memorandum or chronicle of what they saw and heard on manuscript behind them. But the first four have left just precisely such memoranda of their times as are of assistance to us here. Bacon, in his "Apothegms," Spenser in his poems,* and Home again," written in 1591, are: "And there, though last not least, is Ætion, "Ætion" is generally assumed by commentators to stand in the verse for "Shakespeare." But it is difficult to imagine how this can possibly be more than mere |