, 1866-11-15
NEW PUBLICATIONS.

!
NATHANIEL HoIHEs. New York: 1lurd e.
H"nEh on, 1860.
1.-THE vii aud good fellow Of the London
link holders; the menial dadche and tlcyt Of
the play house. the actor, aud joint proprie-
tor Of the New Theatre on the Bank Side"
WAS not the great poet, because this holder
of gcutIcmcn's horses did some deer stealing |
"when but child and all unknown to fame" I
Shakespeare stole a deer, perhaps; and he |
could not, therefore, hold In his head such
colossal thing as Hamlet. Bunyan mended |
tin pans; therefore, he did not patch up
noble Christian out Of the best Auslo-saxon
words, and give to mankind our greatest |
allegory. Milton was pedagogue,
aud hen.hussy Of many wives; and how
could he write augels out Of heaven and back |
again, and draw a character SO astonishing |
as the iudomitable Satan. Such, by parody,
is the logic Of Miss Della Bacon and her dis
cip1e Mr. Nathanie. Holmes. The major |
premise Of this profundity Is that men who
sometimes do little or mcau things, will
never do great or noble ones.
That Shakespeare borrowed literally, we
know we'll. His balance of Indebtedness
may be inferred from Malone's laborious COM
putations in regard to the First, Second and
Third parts Of Henry VI. Out Of G,0i3 lines,
It'll were written by some author preceding
Shakespeare; 1878 BY himself. on the founda-
tion laid by his predecessors; and 1893 en-
tircly by himself. But literary theft wns no
crime, either among the earlier poets or In
the days Of Elizabeth. Father Chauccr
deckcd himself with many plumcs for which
he gave no credit md the play writer's were
quite as properly editors Of old plays as Gu
thors ofnew ones, up to the time when the
young man, Shakespeare, went down from
stratford to London. Emerson says thought
Is the property Of him who can entertain it;
and of him who can adequately place
It,. The ideas OF one generation
become the Inheritance Of the
next; and the great world-books descend
through perpetual emcpdation till they
meet their man Of destiny, who puts them
into stereotype wclln,gh perfect. Th.
model language Of the Bible is not the pro-
duct Of forty-si1 clever Englishmen in the
seventeenth century. but it passed under the
classical revision of many centuries. So
Grotius says ths Lords prayer grew up to
Its perfection in ancient times. The grandly
flowing rhythm of the Episcopalian liturgy
did not adjust It's harmony In a day, but fol
lowed the history of the Catholic Churcl,
and the Reformation. Blackstone is not the
anthor of the finely turned phrases aud
.mort distinctions Of The common INV hnt
that body Of wisdom ia the resn,t of
aces of shr.wa and nractico1 rcdrct,on
reaching back TO the sen kjnrs of thc Moth
and old Minos in Crete, In like manner
some Of the best plays In The ENGLISH drama
came down through the lands or countless
actors. managers. amateurs, reyfsers match
ers. authors md historians, I'LL fina1tr thcv
fell into the shuLspcarian mon1d and r..
celyed their eternal shapc,
Even the feuorspt are by this time dis.
suaded from tle belief that Mr.. Hamlet
wrote Shakspeare's plays, There il still one
who believes that Mr. Bacon wrote them.
J Hawthorne tells touching story Of the last
! months of Miss Bacon. from which II is easv
! TO rather symotoms of insanity In tbe nina
| of the yariike hut clever orieinator or ~,
| present canpa1cu aeuiust our fuyorItc mott
In 1886 Miss Hacon. 1earncdlv md nossson.
| atcly. and jrratloually opeued the fl-ht. Her
pcltlnc of the ..critfcs'' demands symna,hv
for Tic scholars aud antlouarIans Of the
Shakspcariana, We verify believe she must
have been with Whipp1e lat rrcat feast ot
language and stolen the scraps.' Tier non,
dcrous inycctiyes sometimes oycrtop Samuel
johnson. Now brief and puugcnt, she puts
much smart talk In little spacc: now prolix
and wandering, "she drawcth out the thread
Of her yerbosity finer than the staplc OF her
argument"
Hear Miss Bacon apostrophIze Shakspeare
"No! Traitor and miscrcant! No! What
did you do with thcms Ttle manuscripts,
You have skulkcd this question long enough
| Wv, ~r;11 t,nro At x,n ,11.,A IA,
them. The awakening aces win nut yoa or
tue stand, and you will not leave It unti
you answer the question, .What did YOU DE-
with them =" This has the unmIstakablt
ring Of the cracked kettle. bu1
we will now present short mas
sare. spark1inr and fnll Of vfror
mighty coufuror still. even in the MAC,
where men most do concrceatc. and nobod
shall stir hair On his impossible old head
or trouble him with a question. Hc slal
stand there still, pulling intcrminable sp,cn
dors out OF places they never could have bee,
in; that is the charm of it !; be shall stan.
there rubbing those few sickly play-hous
manuscripts ofhis, or a few old. musty play
house novels, and vriucInr from them IL
very vine Of nll our life. showing from thei
greasy folds the ccms and gold of ali th
ages.'
And again: "The age which has put bacl
old Homer's eyes, safe III his head agair
after he had gone without them well Mig
three thousand years; the age whic
has found and labelled and sent t
the museum. the skull in whic
the pyramid Of Chcops was designed
and the lions which the might
hunter before tue Lord ordered for lis ne
palace on the Tisris some millcnniums Garlic
: the age IN which we haye abjured our faith
Romulus aid Renus, is surely one iu whic