Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/256

One is tempted to make this surmise serve to explain a famous argument which the Baconians derive from a letter written by a friend to Bacon in acknowledgment of the present of a volume which he had lately published. This friend was Tobie Matthew, a devoted adherent of Bacon, who had done him important service from time to time, and who consequently was frequently saluted with the little pots of incense which Tobie swung adoringly before his patron. Now Bacon wrote him a letter dated the 9th of April, the year not given; but it must have been after January, 1621, because Matthew's reply addresses the Viscount St. Albans, and Bacon did not receive that title previously to the above date. Bacon's letter accompanied a copy of a volume. Matthew's reply acknowledges this "great and noble token" of his "lordship's favor." And the Baconians claim that this token was the Folio of the Plays, published in 1623; and they point triumphantly to the postscript to Matthew's letter, which runs thus: "The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation, and of this side of the sea, is of your lordship's name, though he be known by another;" that is to say, a few intimate friends, like Matthew, knew perfectly well that Bacon wrote the plays, but suffered them, for prudential reasons, to appear under the name of Shakspeare, who doubtless had some hand in them. The temptation is, I say, to account for that postscript by supposing that Matthew was acquainted with those inferior passages which may have strayed into the plays from the pen of Bacon, that he appraised them with the