tice, and the fullest recognition in theory; and if there is á point in the social system where, more than elsewhere, its action should be recognized, it is in the mode of securing to the laborer the value which he creates; that is, in the making and fulfilling of the wage contract. If there be socialism enough in the air to seriously unsettle the rights of property, it is necessary that those rights be made clearly demonstrable. Original production and valid transfer afford the only sound basis of tenure of any form of wealth; and if we are ever to be called on to show our abstracts of title to personal as well real estate, we must be able to show such a chain of free and valid transfers, beginning, in each instance, with the producer. Force or fraud anywhere in the series beclouds the title; but a failure to trace the series to an original producer invalidates it. If the laborer be not regarded as having produced, owned and freely sold that portion of manufactured goods which directly results from his agency, it is difficult to see how any later title to it can be perfect. It will be difficult to convince the laborer that he can so far dehumanize himself as to lose, otherwise than by a sale for an equivalent, his title to that which he actually creates. It is little less than suicidal to shrink from the application of moral tests to this part of the economic system. If there be a form of teaching not calculated to strengthen the social fabric, it is one that should present the existing order of society with its severer features in the foreground, and, at the same time, obscure the application of the principle on which every valid title to property rests, to the point in the system where titles originate. ARTICLE V.-BACON'S PROMUS. Bacon's Promus. Illustrated with Passages from Shakspear. By Mrs. HENRY POTTS. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Boston, 1883. With Preface by E. A. ABBOTT, D.D., Headmaster of London School. MRS. POTTS has re-discovered in the Harleian Collection a manuscript Promus of Formularies and Elegancies. There seems to be no doubt that a part of the manuscript dates about the years 1594 to 1596. The date, Dec. 5th, 1594, appears on the first page and at the top of the page. There has been no attempt to dispute that the handwriting except in the copying of the French proverbs is that of Lord Bacon. For the purpose of this paper it will be assumed that Lord Bacon wrote the notes contained in the Promus and that he commenced the writing in 1594. So far from 1596 being proved to be the date at which the singular manuscript was finished, it appears that the first acknowledged writings of Lord Bacon, which contain phrases traceable to the notes, were first published in 1623. Passages similar to the Plays may have dated earlier or later than the representations of the respective Plays. So far as an earlier use may be traced in other writings than Bacon's, it may indicate either (1) the dependence of such other writings upon the Promus, (2) the dependence of the Promus upon such other writings, (3) their mutual dependence upon some independent source, or (4) sometimes one and sometimes another of these suppositions, 1, 2, and 3. The author argues the dependence on the Promus of the plays known as Shakspear's; and therefrom infers the independent proposition that Bacon wrote the plays a proposition not new nor unrefuted. It may be assumed that the Baconian theory of the authorship of the plays, played and published under the name of Shakspear, has not been generally received; and that neither has nice literary criticism nor historical accuracy found suffi cient evidence to award to the great and ignoble lawyer and philosopher the other crown of the all-surpassing poet and dramatist. There may have been prejudice in the reluctance of readers to attribute to one who sold his judgments, the power of creating the sweetness of an Ophelia, a Rosalind. That reluctance was, however, not only nearly universal, but is a vital force in the common-sense of criticism, however subtle, and is worthy of a place in the critic's memory while receiving the new evidence on which Mrs. Potts asks for the reversal of a former judgment. Virtually the motion is for a new trial. It is in question whether the dates, the matter of the Promus, the resemblances between notes in the Promus and passages in the plays, are such as to indicate that the mind which created the plays was prompted by the Promus; whether from an affirmative answer it is to be inferred that Bacon wrote the plays, and whether such indication and inference are of suffi cient force to justify a reöpening of a long adjusted case. That Mrs. Pott for many reasons deserves much of the readers of her book and of the lovers of Shakspear for the new and interesting matters her study has laid before them will not be questioned, but the adjudication of the motion, which she makes to the literary tribunals of the world, must be altogether independent of their indebtedness to her, if they are not to imitate the fashion which made favor the father of award. It is noticeable that even her prefacer refuses to accept Mrs. Potts' opinion, since he apologizes in his first sentence for "an introduction written by one who is unable to accept the demonstration;" but it would be poor return of Mrs. Potts' frankness in accepting such an introduction, to refuse a reasonable care in the inspection of the evidence she presents. After the method of the Baconian induction let us first set aside some bits of evidence explicable otherwise than by the theory sought to be proved. Too great consequence is given to the numerical argument, by which it is assumed (Appendix L) that forty-four hundred and four passages in the plays, sonnets, and poems are taken from the Promus; many of the resemblances being imperceptible to an acumen less penetrating than the author's. For a single illustration, note 1352 Quod paucioribus et facilioribus indiget, translated, presumably by the author, "What needs fewer and easier means," will very far from prove plagiarism in Lear III. 1, "Gent. Have you no more to say? Kent. Few words, but to effect more than all yet." If not plagiarism, a fortiori the passage cannot go to prove identity of authorship. The number 4404 must be further reduced by such proportion as shall be deemed attributable to both Promus and Plays borrowing from or being influenced by the same sources-say The Proverbs of Solomon, Virgil, contemporaneous books, Heywood, Beaumont, and Fletcher. The author quotes Spedding, p. 6, to the effect that "the notes in the Promus were from books then in every scholar's hands." Deduct again another uncertain number of resemblances for the evident satirizing of the notions of the Euphues of Lyly in Love's Labour Lost in which, through the character of Armado especially, Shakspear is as much the satirist of the Euphuism, which Bacon cherished, and to cultivate which, by the author's theory, he kept the Promus or note book, as is Molière the Satirist of les Precieuses Ridicules in the play of that name. Shakspear's satiric protest against "Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectations, Have blown me full of maggot ostentation."-L. L. L., V. 2. hardly needs the text from 1 Cor. viii. 1, note 250 of the Promus, Scientia inflat, Charitas edificat; and note 247, Multæ te literae ad insaniam redigunt, Acts xii. 24, (much learning hath made thee mad), while Shakspear may indeed have received some impression from the Bible, with or without the note, is not so probable an inspiration as the satiric purpose of his play, for these other lines from the same scene: "None are so surely caught when they are catched "Your crafty, your world-wise man, he above the rest, Weaves his own snares so fine he's often caught in them," says the writer of another old play whom possibly Bacon never prompted. Next must be deducted from the 4404 the further indefinite number of phrases or ideas found in the Promus and the plays (indefinite because the boundary line is a matter of opinion in each case), which bear no internal evidence whether the Promus borrows from the Play or the Play from the Promus. Of this class are the most striking verbal resemblances. Take a single instance again, p. 119, note 106: Compare "A fool's bolt is soon shot." "A fool's bolt is soon shot." (H. V., III. 7; As Y. L., v. 4). -Letter to Essex, 1597. This example is certainly fairly taken for proving the author's theory since Henry V. and As You Like It were not printed until 1600. It is, however, quite unlikely that Bacon would have made the note from a published play, and not unlikely that he had made the note from an earlier hearing of the play, or even of Shakspear's conversation, which may have been "enriched " without his keeping a Promus. A more important deduction from the number of resemblances between the Promus and the Plays, and a very singular one, must be made, to cancel those passages in which the plays in no manner resemble the original note in the Promus, but the resemblance is found solely in the wording of a translation of the note by the author or another. Instance, note 1060: Nescio quid meditans nugarum totus in illis.-Hor. Sat. I., IX. 2 This the author translates "musing on some trifle or other and totally wrapped up in it," and quotes for resemblances in the plays "In maiden meditation fancy free," (M. N. D., II. 1), which contains one word from the same root with one word in the note, and |