It seems that we are to be immediately invited to
grapple with a portentous cipher which Mr. Donnelly has discovered or invented in the Shakespeare folio of 1623, and which, when interpreted, purports to assert that Shakespeare's plays were written by Bacon and not by their reputed author. Let na frankly say that, supposing the alleged very complicated cipher to be really there,—of which we do not expect that it will be easy to convince any one, unless it be accomplished mathematicians familiar (say) with the calculus of generating functions or the theory of numbers,—it would be far easier, in our opinion, to explain it by assuming that Bacon, in his guile, had laid claim in this underhand way, six years after Shakespeare's death, to a reputation that he did not deserve, than that that singularly tutored and unemotional mind had given birth to the passionate and untutored verse which Milton described in the couplet,— "And sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warbles his native wood-notes wild."
The little poetry that is acknowledged as Bacon's is as unlike Shakespeare's as a canal is unlike the loveliest of rivers. " Franciscus Baconis sic cogitavit " might be suitably prefixed to all that Bacon ever wrote, and an analogous exordium could hardly be suitably prefixed to anything that Shakespeare ever wrote.
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