Vol. XXn. No. 2.] 



POPULAE SCTET^CE NEWS. 



27 



wife instead of the impossible Latin form Cal- 

 phurnia. Bacon could as soon have written the 

 "Richard Conqueror" of Sly the tinker as this 

 " Decius Brutus." Indeed, he gives both this 

 name and Calpurnia correctly in a passage in 

 his Essay on Friendship, which is quoted by 

 Judge Holmes {Authorship of Shakespeare, p. 

 289) to show the similaritj' of style in the 

 essay and the play. The judge believes that 

 a comparison of these and other passages 

 which he quotes must make it plain that Bacon 

 wrote the play ; and j-et nothing can be clearer 

 than the fact that the author of the essaj- was 

 perfectlj' familiar with what the writer of the 

 play was ignorant of. 



In 1 Henry IV. (i. 1. 71) the king speaks 

 of 



Mordake the Earl of Fife, and eldest son 



To beaten Donglas; 



but he was not the son of Douglas, but of the 

 Duke of Albany-. How did Shakespeare make 

 this mistake, which Bacon could never have 

 made ? He was misled by the accidental omis- 

 sion of a comma in the edition of Holins- 

 hed's Chronicle, which he followed. Mordake 

 is thus apparently described as ' ' son to the 

 gouvernour Archerabald earle Dowglas," and 

 not merely son to the governor, or Regent of 

 Scotland, the office then held by the Duke of 

 Albany. 



A careful scholar may occasionally be guilty 

 of slips like those, but there are too manj- 

 of them in the pla\-s to justify this excuse for 

 them all. A man of Bacon's training and 

 habits could not have fallen into such repeated 

 and preposterous mistakes, especially in his- 

 tory, where he was thoroughly at home. 



Again : the make-up of the Folio of 1623 is 

 of itself a complete refutation of the Baconian 

 theory. According to Donnelly, this famous 

 volume was most elaborately revised and 

 " doctored " by that eminent dramatist Fran- 

 cis Bacon, in order that it might preserve to 

 coming generations the cryptographic evidence 

 that he, and not Shakespeare, was the author 

 of its contents. According to Judge Holmes, 

 Mrs. Pott, and others, it was published by 

 Bacon two years after his downfall, at a time 

 (to quote Mrs. Pott) " when his failing health 

 caused him to press forward the publication of 

 all his works." The differences between tlie 

 earlier quarto editions of certain plays and the 

 folio are said to be due to the revision of these 

 plays by the author. Now, if we assume that 

 the folio is just what it purports to be, a col- 

 lection of plays made after the author's death, 

 by two of his fellow-actors, — persons of small 

 culture, and no experience as editors, — who 

 did little except to gather up old manuscripts 

 that had been used in the theatre, and were 

 more or less dog's-eared and mutilated, to say 

 nothing of the abridgment and alterations 

 to which they had been subjected for stage 

 purposes ; the earlier quarto editions, per- 

 haps interlined and modified in the theatre, 

 being, in the case of some of the plays, used 

 instead of manuscript copies ; and all this 

 matter put through the press, according to 

 the usage of the titne, with no proof-veading 



worthy of the name, — if we assume this to 

 have been the historj- of the volume, its pecu- 

 liarities and its imperfections are, in the main, 

 easih- accounted for. But if it is to be re- 

 garded as an edition compiled by the author, 

 and presenting the plays in the revised form 

 in which he desires to hand them down to 

 posterity, and especiallj' if w-e are to believe 

 that he has inserted, in the text of certain 

 plaj-s, the secret evidence that thej- are his, 

 and not another's, — if this is the view of the 

 volume that we are to take, its peculiarities 

 are absolutely- inexplicable. No author, least 

 of all one so orderlj' and sj'stematic as Bacon, 

 ever issued a collection of his works in such a 

 fashion, — so badly arranged, so wretchedly 

 printed, — with such inequality of wretchedness 

 withal, for some portions of it are far worse 

 than others in respect to misprints and cor- 

 ruptions of the text. If it is the author's own 

 revised edition, how are we to explain the fact 

 that it contains plays which are manifestly- 

 nothing more than a slight remodelling of 

 earlier work b}- other hands ? that others are 

 apparent!}- pieces loft unfinished, and com- 

 pleted by another plaj-wright ; in some cases 

 by one so inferior to the original author, that 

 he could never have willingly allowed his work 

 to be touched by such a bungler? If it be 

 said (as b\' a verj- small minority of critics) 

 that all the matter is from one and the same 

 hand, this is not inconceivable, if the collect- 

 ing and publishing of the works has been done 

 hy an incompetent or unscrupulous editor after 

 the author's death ; but how can we explain 

 it if the author himself is editor? Why, to re- 

 fer to a single pla}-, should Timon of Athens 

 be left in the state in which we find it, — pure 

 gold with a large admixture of the basest 

 alio}' ; stuff utterly unworthy of the dramatist, 

 even in his 'prentice daj-s? Scarcelj* a critic 

 of the present century has been willing to re- 

 gard the play as the work of a single hand. 

 Portions of it are written in the merest bur- 

 lesque of verse, as if the author had no ear, 

 unless an asinine one, and the thought and 

 sentiment are in keeping with the versification ; 

 while other portions are in the poet's most 

 mature and finished style. The Baconians 

 tell us that this play was one of the latest, if 

 not the very last, which their philosopher 

 wrote, and that Timon is meant as a repre- 

 sentation of himself, deserted by his parasite 

 friends after his fall. If so, is it conceivable 

 that he could have written it as we have it, oi- 

 that, if any inferior writer had a share in it. 

 Bacon would have printed it all as his own ? 

 These and similar questions concerning the 

 folio have never been put to the Baconians, 

 so far as we are aware, and we cannot guess 

 how thej' would attempt to answer them. 

 Can they answer them satisfactorily? 



Some of the arguments of the Baconians, 

 based upon supposed scientific allusions, etc., 

 in the plays, are extremely comical, but we 

 have left ourself no room to quote and discuss 

 them. Possibl}- we ma}' at another time point 

 out the numerous scientific errors made by the 

 writer of the plays. 



THE SENSES OF ANIMALS. 



Sir John Lubbock recently delivered a lec- 

 ture to the members of the Edinburgh Philosophical 

 Institution on "The Sense and Senses of Animals," 

 in the course of which he said, according to the 

 Mechanical World, that there had been so many 

 important recent works published relating to his 

 subject, that he thought it would be more interest- 

 ing were he to deal, for the most part, with his 

 own observations. Different ideas prevailed regard- 

 ing the question of the intelligence of animals. 

 Some people regarded a dog as an animal almost as 

 wise and clever as themselves; but, on asking them 

 if they thought a dog could realize that two and two 

 made four, he £renerally found a good deal of doubt 

 on the point. Sir John Lubbock then described the 

 system which he had adopted in the training of hi.s 

 own black poodle-dog, " Van." He had placed two 

 pieces of cardboard, on one of which was printed 

 in large letters the word " food," the other being 

 blank, on two saucers. In one of the saucers was 

 food, and the card with tlie word upon it. In the 

 other, the blank card and no food. In about ten 

 days the dog began to distinguish the card with the 

 letters from the plain card, and would go at once to 

 the printed one. The lecturer then related in some 

 detail his successful efforts in inducing the dog to 

 bring him the proper card when he wanted food, 

 in teaching him to know other cards containing the 

 words "out," "tea," "bone," "water." On 

 bringing the card marked "out," he would rush 

 to the door. The cards were not put in the same 

 places, but in different positions; and in order that 

 the dog might not be guided by scent, other cards 

 with the same markings were used. No one who 

 saw him look down the row of cards, and pick 

 out the one wanted, could doubt that he sought a 

 particular card for a particular object, lie had 

 found, at the end of three months' experiments, 

 that he could not get the dog to realize the differ- 

 ence of colors, and it was just possible that the 

 dog might be color-blind. He had also failed to 

 get the dog to distinguish among one, two, three, 

 or four broad bands upon the cards. In order 

 to ascertain if bees were sensible to sounds, he had 

 placed some honey on a musical box on his lawn. 

 The box played for ten days without stopping, 

 and then he removed it to a window-sill on tlie first 

 floorof his house. Not a bee came to it. lie again 

 placed it on the lawn, and they again returned to 

 the honey. He next brought it into the drawing- 

 room on the ground floor, about ten yards from its 

 former position, but they did not follow; but on 

 his bringing two or three bees into the house, and 

 putting them on the honey, they began to feed, 

 and, flying off, returned with their companions. It 

 seemed as if they did not hear the time. Regard- 

 ing the old idea that bees would not swarm unless 

 they were "tanged" by the creation of sounds, 

 he was under the impression that it was the " ovei-- 

 tones " which the insects heard, and which were 

 inaudible to our ears. The sounds were so low 

 as to be beyond our range of hearing. Man, he 

 said, had five senses, and fancied that no others 

 were possible; but it was obvious that we could not 

 measure the infinite by our own narrow limitations. 

 Even within the penetration of our own senses 

 there might be endless sounds which we could not 

 hear, and colors of which we have no conception. 

 Tliere was also the other question still remaining 

 for solution, that the familiar world which sur- 

 rounded us might be a different place altogether 

 for other animals, in which there was music we 

 could not hear, colois we could not see, and sen- 

 sations which we could not conceive. The pursuit 

 of such studies gave a clew to senses and perceptions 

 of which we had no conception. 



