202
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. ix. MARCH 15, 1902.
mention of the playing and singing, of the
" hymn " of * God save the Queen ' (alluding,
of course, to the imaginary queen of the
dream), as follows :
1.
GOD save our righteous Queen, Bless our most faithful Queen,
GOD save the Queen. Send her victorious, In goodness glorious, Long to reign over us, GOD save the Queen.
2
LORD our GOD, arise, Turn the Queen's enemies,
And let none fall. Confound base politicks, Flatt'rers and factions' tricks, In thee our hopes we fix, GOD save us all.
3.
Thy choicest favours pour, Now and for evermore,
On our fair Queen : Bless her dominions all, Home and colonial, Round the revolving ball :
GOD save the Queen !
The editor appears to have previously com- piled a little work dealing with the history and antiquities of a small rural district in one of our Midland counties, in which he was greatly assisted by his reverend friend, but, through lack of subscribers, the same did not go to press.
It has occurred to my mind whether the book 'A Dream of a Queen's lleign' was really from a MS. of the period stated (in the style of which it is certainly written), or a "modern antique"; and if the latter, who was its author ? If the former, who was the Master Bernard M referred to, and where is now the original MS., and who was its editor m 1843? Can the rarity of the book be accounted for, and is any reader able to refer to an earlier publication of the dream in any form ? Any further informa- tion on the subject will be appreciated
W. I. R. V.
THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE QUESTION.
(Continued from p. 1//2.)
BACON'S MS. consists of about forty quarto pages \ it is mostly in Bacon's own hand- writing, and the title of one of the sheets,
jromus of Formularies and Elegancies,' was given to the whole collection by the late Mr Speeding "It consists," to quote from Mr. Speddmgs description, "of single sentences set down one after the other without marks between, or any notes of reference and ex- planation." The collection is of the most
miscellaneous character, and it includes
Eroyerbs in English, French, Italian, Spanish, atin, and Greek ; verses from the Bible, and sentences from Latin authors; single words, small turns of expression, certain forms of salutation, and jottings concerning the sayings of Bacon's own friends. It remains to add that there is very little in it that is original or Bacon's own, and that the collection is mostly from books which were then in every scholar's hands.
Those who favour the Bacon authorship of the Shakespeare plays not only wish us to believe that these notes, which were put down with such care, are not used in Bacon's own work, but that they are not common- places. They know their master's work so well that you may take their word for it that there is little or no trace of the * Promus ' entries in Bacon's acknowledged work. And. they argue, Bacon would never have collected about 1,700 sayings, words, &c., if they had been commonplaces, or if he had not intended using them in his work. What, then, did Bacon do with his notes ? He used them, say the Baconians, in the work of Shake- speare.
A quotation from Bacon's " acknowledged work" will assist us in this part of our inquiry :
"Therefore to speak plainly of the gathering of heads or commonplaces, I think first in general that one man's notes will little profit another, because one man's conceit doth so much differ from another's ; and also because the bare note itself is nothing so much as the suggestion it gives the reader. Next I think no proht is gotten of his notes that is not judicious in that whereof he makes his notes." 'Advice to Sir F. Greville,' about 1590.
The gathering of commonplaces is advo- cated by Bacon not only in the advice to Greville, but in several places in his work, notably in the * De Augmentis,' book vi. The notes may be commonplaces, but they must be selected with care and with particular reference to the suggestions they offer ; for not only will one man's notes little profit another, but the same sayings or sentences will conjure up in another man's mind quite different trains of thought, which would be controlled by a differing experience and environment. In other words, so many heads, so many wits. Now let us compare Bacon's wit with Shakespeare's.
I will first deal with one or two single words that are noted in the 'Promus,' and will quote Bacon and Shakespeare as they are quoted in Mrs. Pott's work, which seeks to show that the notes are used in the great dramatist's work.
