Chapter I: Front Matter

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The Mystery
of
Francis Bacon

_WILLIAM T. SMEDLEY_

THE MYSTERY
OF
FRANCIS BACON

BY
WILLIAM T. SMEDLEY.

Ad D.B.

"Si bene qui latuit, bene vixit, tu bene vivis:
Ingeniumque tuum grande latendo patet."
--_John Owen's Epigrammatum_, 1612.

LONDON:
ROBERT BANKS & SON,
RACQUET COURT, FLEET STREET E.C.

1912.

"_But such is the infelicity and unhappy disposition
of the human mind in the course of invention that it
first distrusts and then despises itself: first will
not believe that any such thing can be found out; and
when it is found out, cannot understand how the world
should have missed it so long._"

--"NOVUM ORGANUM," Chap. CX.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
Preface 5
CHAPTER
I.--Sources of Information 9
II.--The Stock from which Bacon Came 14
III.--Francis Bacon, 1560 to 1572 19
IV.--At Cambridge 25
V.--Early Compositions 29
VI.--Bacon's "Temporis Partus Maximus" 36
VII.--Bacon's First Allegorical Romance 47
VIII.--Bacon in France, 1576-1579 52
IX.--Bacon's Suit on His Return to England, 1580 62
X.--The "Rare and Unaccustomed Suit" 76
XI.--Bacon's Second Visit to the Continent and After 82
XII.--Is it Probable that Bacon left Manuscripts Hidden Away? 94
XIII.--How the Elizabethan Literature was Produced 98
XIV.--The Clue to the Mystery of Bacon's Life 103
XV.--Burghley and Bacon 114
XVI.--The 1623 Folio Edition of Shakespeare's Plays 123
XVII.--The Authorised Version of the Bible, 1611 126
XVIII.--How Bacon Marked Books with the Publication of
Which He Was Connected 132
XIX.--Bacon and Emblemata 140
XX.--Shakespeare's Sonnets 148
XXI.--Bacon's Library 156
XXII.--Two German Opinions on Shakespeare and Bacon 161
XXIII.--The Testimony of Bacon's Contemporaries 170
XXIV.--The Missing Fourth Part of "The Great Instauration" 177
XXV.--The Philosophy of Bacon 187
Appendix 193