TJie Bacon- Shakespeare Folly 403 



It was inevitable that the Bacon folly, after once 

 adopting such methods as those of Mrs. Pott and 

 Mr. Donnelly, should proceed to commit suicide 

 by piling up extravagances. By such methods one 

 can prove anything, and accordingly we find these 

 writers busy in tracing Bacon's hand in the writ- 

 ings of Greene, Marlowe, Shirley, Marston, Mas- 

 singer, Middleton, and Webster. They are sure 

 that he was the author of Montaigne's Essays, 

 which were afterward translated into what we have 

 always supposed to be the French original. Mr. 

 Donnelly believes that Bacon also wrote Burton's 

 " Anatomy of Melancholy." Next comes Dr. Or- 

 ville Owen with a new cipher, which proves that 

 Bacon was the son of Queen Elizabeth by Robert 

 Dudley, and that he was the author of the " Faerie 

 Queene " and other poems attributed to Edmund 

 Spenser. Finally we have Mr. J. E. Roe, who 

 does not mean to be outdone. He asks us what 

 we are to think of the notion that an ignorant tin- 

 ker, like John Bunyan, could have written the 

 most perfect allegory in any language. Perish the 

 thought ! Nobody but Bacon could have done it. 

 Of course Bacon had been more than fifty years 

 in his grave when " Pilgrim's Progress " was pub- 

 lished as Bunyan's. But your true Baconizer is 

 never stopped by trifles. Mr. Roe assures us that 



