Mr. Leslie Stephen, with amazing nerve and a fine sense of humour, has carried the war of the rival claims into the enemies’ country, and propounded the theory, with no little plausibility, that so far from Bacon being the author of the Plays, Shakespeare was the real writer of Bacon’s philosophical works. Mr. Theobald claims to prove that Bacon had ample leisure in which to write all Shakespeare and his own books as well. Mr. Stephen has come to the conclusion that his time was so fully occupied with business, and political and financial anxieties, that he never found the opportunity he was always seeking to perfect his great philosophical reform. Up to the year of the accession of James I., he had not been able to prepare any statement of his philosophic ideas. His desire, as we know from his letters, was to stand well with the King; his scruples, as we also gather from his letters, did not make him hesitate to employ questionable practices when he had his own interests to serve. If he had not time to write, he could get a book written for him. He selected Shakespeare, who at this period had a great reputation as the author of Hamlet, for the purpose. Why Shakespeare, it may be asked? Because, says Mr. Stephen, he knew Shakespeare through Ben Jonson; he knew Southampton as a friend and patron of Shakespeare, and he therefore employed Shakespeare through Southampton—the present of £1,000, which it is known was made to Shakespeare by his youthful patron, being money paid by Bacon on account, for the writing of the Advancement of Learning.

If the supposition that Shakespeare wrote this book for Bacon be correct, argues Mr. Stephen, “he might naturally try to insert some intimation of authorship to which he could appeal in case of necessity.” Mr. Stephen sought for the intimation in the Advancement, and he discovered it in the first 81 letters. The opening words are, “There were under the law, excellent King, both daily sacrifices and free will offerings the one pro” (ceeding, &c.) These letters (to the end of pro) can be re-arranged to make the following: “Crede Will Shakespeare, green innocent reader; he was the author of excellent writing; F.B.N. fifth idol. lye.” For the assistance of any one who cares to verify the cipher, Mr. Stephen explains that in both cases (the original and the decipheration) A occurs in 4 places, B in 1, C in 3, D in 3, E in 15, F in 4, G in 2, H in 4, I in 6, K in 1, L in 6, N in 6, O in 4, P in 1, R in 7, S in 3, T in 5, U in 1, W in 3, X in 1, and Y in 1.

Mr. Stephen assumes that Shakespeare explained this saucy little anagram to Bacon when the work was published, and that Bacon retaliated by “getting at” the printers of the folio after Shakespeare’s death, and inserting a cryptogram claiming the authorship for himself. Bacon is imagined to have said to himself, “If Shakespeare succeeds in claiming my philosophy, I will take his plays in exchange.” “He had become,” says our theorist, “demoralised to the point at which he could cheat his conscience by such lamentable casuistry.” In 1608 Bacon was Solicitor-General, and a rich man. He approached Shakespeare a second time with the object of having his great philosophical work continued. Three years afterwards, Shakespeare left the stage, and retired to pass the last five years of his life at Stratford. Why did he retire? “Because,” says Mr. Stephen, “Bacon had grown rich and could make it worth his while to retire to a quiet place where he would not be tempted to write plays, or drink at the ‘Mermaid,’ or make indiscreet revelations.” If it should be asked what he was doing, the answer is obvious. He was writing the Novum Organum. Baconians and Mr. Leslie Stephen are agreed that the Novum Organum is the work of a poet, and that it was written by the author of the Plays. But if it is conceded that Shakespeare wrote Novum Organum, it still remains a mystery to Baconians as to who wrote Shakespeare. After Shakespeare’s death, Bacon, in De Augmentis, wrote that “the theatre might be useful either for corruption or for discipline; but in modern times there is plenty of corruption on the stage, and no discipline.” Mr. Stephen deduces from this that in order to aim a back-handed blow at Shakespeare, Bacon would blaspheme the art of which he claimed to be master—that he was, in fact, according to our other theorist, fouling the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of his Instauratio Magna.

Neither of the theories we have just reviewed need be taken seriously. We know that Bacon himself gave an account of the scheme of the Magna Instauratio in a section of the Novum Organum, called the Distributio Operis. The fourth book was to have contained examples of the “new method,” and of the results to which it led. The fifth was to contain what Bacon had accomplished in Natural Philosophy without the aid of his own method, and the sixth was to set forth the New Philosophy—the results of the application of the new method, and all the Phenomena of the Universe. Mr. Leslie Ellis tells us that Bacon never hoped to complete the sixth part; he speaks of it as a thing et supra vires et ultra spes nostras collocata. Mr. Leslie Stephen’s whimsical retort to the Instauratio theory may be regarded as a jeu d’esprit.