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the period, but from "internal evidence," gleaned from the pages of the book itself, it may safely be inferred that he was of a Dutch family, a "Knickerbocker", a lawyer by profession and an inveterate hater of England and the English people, which latter fact may explain his readiness to entertain and exploit the antiShakespeare idea. Starting with the well-known letter of Robert Greene to Marlowe and others, in which he refers to "an upstart crow, beautiful with our feathers," he fills about twenty pages of his book with a scholarly and somewhat detailed analysis of the more important plays, reaching the conclusion that only the very worst features of any of them, if any part at all, should be credited to William Shakespeare.

It is highly probable that this attack upon the popular belief regarding the authorship of the plays received, at the time, little, if any attention. There is reason to believe that Hart's book enjoyed but a limited circulation and was not widely read among those who would be likely to take up the cudgels in defense of the orthodox view.

But for some years previous to the publication of Hart's book, the question raised therein had been in the mind of another; one who had studied the plays from an entirely different point of view and had arrived at the same conclusion by an entirely different route.

That other was the child born in the Town of Tallmadge, in the log cabin by the brook, on the second of February, 1811, a few months before David and Alice Bacon turned their faces away from the enterprise on which all their hopes for the future had rested, to make the long and weary journey back to Connecticut where

were still a few faithful friends who would stand between them and starvation.

Delia Bacon shared with her brother in the inheritance from a fine ancestry, of a remarkably brilliant mind, together with a rare power of concentration and devotion of self to a single idea which, in the end, proved to be her Nemesis.

Though her early youth was spent in extreme poverty she became one of the most accomplished women of her day.

Highly educated, she was a successful teacher, a popular lecturer and the author of two or three successful volumes before she became absorbed in the development of her theory regarding the plays of Shakespeare, of which from childhood she had been an incessant reader.

Briefly, her theory was that a profound political philosophy is imbedded in the text or concealed beneath the surface of the plays, the open avowal of which at that period would have been fatal to the authors, who were not Shakespeare, of whom she spoke disdainfully as "Lord Leicester's groom," but a group of learned men about the court of Queen Elizabeth, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and others.

She was inspired by a great passion to unfold to the world this philosophy, the key to which she believed she had found in the letters of Lord Bacon.

In 1853, having matured her plans and committed her thoughts to writing, she went to London (contrary to the wishes of her family and friends) for further research, especially in a certain direction. Her desire to accomplish this had become an unescapable obses

sion, and she hoped, also, to procure the publication of her magnum opus which, through the good offices of Nathaniel Hawthorne, then American Consul at Liverpool, finally did appear as a large volume of about six hundred pages, bearing the lofty title, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded.

It begins with a charming preface by Hawthorne, prepared with great care, and tactful to a degree quite worthy of the diplomatic post which he filled, for he afterward admitted that he had never read the book and that he knew of only one person who had succeeded in doing so. "This person," he adds, "a young man of genius and enthusiasm has assured me that he has read it from beginning to end and is completely a convert to its doctrines."

In style and composition the book shows excellent literary ability, a knowledge of classical literature and a remarkable command of the English tongue, but it is involved and often obscure, so as to be quite forbidding.

Some notion of it may be had from the fact that the opening sentence, stating the proposition to be demonstrated, contains no fewer than two hundred and twenty-five words, and this is followed by another numbering two hundred and twenty-one.

Hawthorne, who saw Delia Bacon but once, and that in London, describes her as follows:

......

She was rather uncommonly tall and had a striking and expressive face, dark hair, dark eyes, which shone with an inward light as soon as she began to speak and by and by a color came into her cheeks and made her look almost young.. I could suppose her to have been handsome and exceedingly attractive once....... Her conversation was remarkably suggestive, alluring forth one's own ideas from the shy places where they usually haunt.

She visited Carlyle, to whom she had brought a letter from Emerson. Of her he wrote in reply:

As for Miss Bacon, we find her, with her modest, shy dignity, with her solid character and strange enterprise, a real acquisition, and hope we shall see more of her, now that she has come nearer to us to lodge.

I have not in my life seen anything so tragically quixotic as her Shakespeare enterprise.......I do cheerfully what I can, which is far more than she asks of me, for I have not seen a prouder, more silent soul; but there is not the least possibility of truth in the notion she has taken up.

Miss Bacon wrote to her sister as follows:

My visit to Mr. Carlyle was very rich. I wish you could have heard him laugh. Once or twice I thought he would have taken the roof of the house off. At first they were perfectly stunned, he and the gentleman he had invited to meet me. They turned black in the face at my presumption. "Do you mean to say so and so?" said Mr. Carlyle with his strong emphasis, and I said that I did, and they both looked at me with staring eyes, speechless from want of words in which to cenvey their sense of my audacity. At length Mr. Carlyle came down on me with such a volley. I did not mind it in the least. I told him he did not know what was in the plays, if he said that, and no one could know who believed that "that booby" wrote them.

It was then that he began to shriek, you could have heard him a mile!

Some time before the publication of her book she took up her residence at Stratford and began to haunt the Church of the Holy Trinity in which is Shakespeare's grave. She was obsessed with the idea that rich secrets regarding the plays, their meaning and origin, had been placed in that grave by Raleigh or Bacon and that the "curse" which is inscribed upon its cover, was put there as a protection, until there should come one with the conviction that the laurel wreath resting on the brow of the man of Stratford was a lie, and the courage to tear it away.

The four lines of this well-known epitaph are really little better than doggerel and quite unworthy of the genius to whom they are attributed.

Good friend for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here:

Blest be the man that spares these stones
And curst be he that moves my bones.

That she was determined not to "spare these stones" soon became evident, for along with the system of

philosophy which, as Hawthorne says, had grown up in

her mind "without her volition, contrary, in fact, to the determined resistance of her volition," there had come the belief, based on the letter of Lord Bacon, that if she could raise the slab of stone on which the curse is cut, the secret would be revealed.

Looking to the accomplishment of her purpose she even ventured to begin negotiations with the clerk and afterwards with the vicar of the church and it is thought that both were inclined to favor her proposal.

At any rate, she was not interfered with, was allowed the freedom of the church, even at a late hour of the night. On one of her nightly visits she brought a dark lantern and, thinking herself alone, made her way to the tomb and began a careful examination of it, satisfying herself that she could, alone, remove the cover. Doubtless frightened by the chance of finding nothing if she made the trial, thus wrecking hopes by which she had been sustained for years, at the last moment her courage failed her, and soon the clerk made his appearance, having been purposely on the watch, though hidden.

But the end had come; the brilliant intellect had given way. The Mayor of Stratford assumed charge of

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