Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 15, 2025
The question whether he wrote Shakespeare's plays needs almost as much discussion on the moral as on the intellectual side. James Spedding, after studying Bacon's life and works for thirty years, said: "I see no reason to suppose that Shakespeare did not write the plays. But if somebody else did, then I think I am in a position to say that it was not Lord Bacon."
There are few better pieces of historic narrative in English than this "History of Henry VII." Special thanks are due to Mr. Spedding for having reprinted, in full, the first three editions of the "Essays," the three that were published by Bacon himself.
They lacked the rich, the unexampled variety of topic, treatment, and theme which marks the Poems of 1842. These were all reasons why FitzGerald should think that the two slim green volumes held the poet's work at its highest level. Perhaps he was not wrong, after all. The Poems, and such criticisms as those of Spedding and Sterling, gave Tennyson his place. All the world of letters heard of him.
Spedding says, "it must certainly be reckoned among the most perfect of Bacon's productions." The personal form with each paragraph begins and ends. "Franciscus Bacon sic cogitavit ... itaque visum est ei" gives to it a special tone of serious conviction, and brings the interest of the subject more keenly to the reader.
Spedding says, "is constantly in his thoughts; underlies everything; defines for him the limits of human speculation; and, as often as the course of inquiry touches at any point the boundary line, never fails to present itself. There is hardly any occasion or any kind of argument into which it does not at one time or another incidentally introduce itself."
Browning was not wholly uninterested in the attempts made to transfer the glory of the Shakespearian drama to Bacon; he agreed with Spedding that whatever else might be a matter of doubt, it was certain that the author of the "Essays" could not have been the author of the plays.
These collections it was his way to sift and transcribe again and again, adding as well as omitting. From one of these, belonging to 1594 and the following years, the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, Mr. Spedding has given curious extracts; and the whole collection has been recently edited by Mrs. Henry Pott.
Another great Cambridge man of those days, the poetical mathematician, Leslie Ellis, was kind to my brother, who had an introduction to him probably from Spedding. Ellis was already suffering from the illness which confined him to his room at Trumpington, and prevented him from ever giving full proofs of intellectual powers, rated by all who knew him as astonishing.
Although Tennyson was averse to mingling in general society, and was difficult of access in his home, except to his intimate friends, yet those friends were among the elect spirits of England, and he has recorded his feeling for some of them for Maurice, Fitzgerald, Spedding, Lear, among others in poems that deserve a place among his best.
Frederic Maurice, Richard Trench, John Kemble, Spedding, Venables, Charles Buller, Richard Milnes and others: I have heard that in speaking and arguing, Sterling was the acknowledged chief in this Union Club; and that "none even came near him, except the late Charles Buller," whose distinction in this and higher respects was also already notable.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking