"What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted? Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just; And he but naked, though lock'd up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted."
We have plainly another case of paraphrase to be accounted for; and we can understand why Bacon, who used to send sonnets to Elizabeth to soften her heart towards Essex, should lament, "But I could never prevail with her."
The badness of Bacon's efforts at poetry has suggested to me the possibility that some of the didactic passages in the plays which Shakspeare altered and amended for the theatre, were left as they came from his pen; just as other passages from the playwrights of that day may be found streaking the rich Shakspearean lode, recognized by their inferiority or difference of style, but no longer imputable to the culprits by name. Pages of this un-Shakspearean matter may have drifted from Bacon's pen into the original crudeness of some of the plays, particularly into those which set forth periods of history.
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 judgment of a toady, and exaggerated their quantity as well as quality. This method for breaking the force of Matthew's postscript I reject, for the simple reason that it is not only strained, but superfluous; for Bacon published his "History of Henry VII." in March, 1622, the "De Augmentis" in October, 1623, and the "Apothegms" in December, 1624. One of these books, probably the first of them, and the first which Matthew had received from Bacon since he was made Viscount St. Albans, was sent; and Matthew took the first opportunity to flatter Bacon with his title in connection with his genius, saying in the postscript, "A most prodigious wit is my friend Bacon, though he now passes by the other designation as Viscount St. Albans."