St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-05-27
GATH TO ICNATIUS.
The Cryptogram Torn Into
Shreds With a Gall-Dipped
Pen.
Donnelly Treats Shakespeare
as the Jesuits Treated
Columbus.
He Is a Plagiarist, Stealing
His Ideas From Poor
Bacon.
Iikened Unto a TpiekStep Who
Fumbles With the
Cards.

Minnesota. will be entertaining read
ing. The pen of Gath, fable says, is
dipped in gail. In this particular III
stance, its productions sustain the leg
ends assertion. The Introduction is
spicy:
1t is amusing to note lgnatius Don
nelly crossing the ocean torevolutionize
the convictions Of men on the authorship
of Shakespeare. Donnelly was the son
of poor woman IN Philadelphia, who
had a bright family. which had to de-
pend upon their own eXertiOnS. IL he
had attained great distinction as the
widows son III some field of literature or
art. and 800 years afterward chap had
come along to prove that because he
was the widows son and never lunched
with great people he therefore could not
have produced his own works, there
would have been sense of injustice in
his mind which he is entirely guiltlesS
of in regard TO Shakespeare.
Some men are consulted so superb
cially that they cannot apprehend a
simple statement Mr.. DOnnelly treats
Shakespeare as the the Jesuits treated
Columbus. To read the Jesuits' stories
of Columbus you would suppose that
he discovered America wholly for the
benefit of the church, and that he was
a philanthropist who cared nothing for
physical conquest or scientific dis
covery, but was only bent upon con-
verting the multitude in the Indies. In
similar spirit Mr.. Donnelly, whose
first name is that of the founder of the
order of JesuitS, considers that the
sleight. the fine flowing fancy, the
navigator and dicoverer in the literary
field must have been tied up
to some hodge-podge of learning.
some miraculous system, some hidden
cipher There must have been dogma,
he thinks, in the nature of as free
hearted lad as Shakespeare. He who
could crack off those sentences which
reach around the world and make fun
out of broad old characters like Fall |
staff, and be as much of a lover as little
Juliet, was not a bright boy who had
run away from home to join the actors,
and then had written their plays, but
he was a profoundly educated man,
with his mouth full of pebbles,
Off those sparks of wit and fancy,
was concealing a cipher for some man
almost as great as himself to discover |
in the space Of three hundred years. |
You can see the compliment that MI. |
Donnelly pays to his own intellect as
having been the only person who un-
travelled Shakespeare. L am not una
ware that some fairly capable men have
tempered with this Bacon theory of |
are carried away by Mr.. Donnelly'S |
cryptogram. But l can much better |
excuse a real lover of the marvellous |
than the inventor of a puzzle which he
designed to puzzle, and did not answer
the general purpose of truth. [ can
prove to myself and to some persons,
at least, that Mr.. Donnelly is no dis
Of l,,,1i folNn
monger, and to do this | need go no
further than Mr.. Donnelly's own liter
airy work.
He began with a locum called "At-
1antiS," showing that there had been an
island Off in the ocean, or rather a con-
tinent somewhere out where the Canary
islands stand, or the Azores, and that
this had been filled by a bright, great
people; that the island had sunk, and
that the veStigeS of the civilization of
these people were scattered over
Europe. This was charming story to
many persons who had not been widely
read. In point of fact, he got that story
out of Bacon, who wrote book called
''The New Atlantis upon the very
same superstition, and let ittly as feeler.
Bacon propOunded the theory of
Sunken island or continent; his purpose
was most instructive one. Donnelly,
who plagiariZed from Bacon, had no
other purpose than to make wonder
and amaze the middle-claSS fireSide.
Had atlantis" been allowed to stay as
Mr. DOnnelly's only book, it would have
been thought that he had either diScov-
cred something or had honestly tried to
discover something. His method in
"Atantis" was very much like his
cipher and -cryptogram; he went all
around the arts and sciences to pro-
duce testimony. Some of his chapters
of testimony were clever, and others
were silly. His book had a right good
sale, and that always gladdenS the heart
of an author, but more especially that
Of his publisher.
Mr.. Donnelly, however, in next to no
time got off another book called "Rag-
naroc," which showed that the world
had been hit by meteor and set back
and Smitherecned. This did not attract
so much attention, for it was hardly
possible that the same man could dis
cover a sunken continent and a pull
verified part OF continent. The man
was evidently making these books to
sell, like the razor man who announced
that he lost money on every razor, but
sold so many that he managed to get
little profit.
Next Mr.. Donnelly goes back to the
same Bacon that he got the idea of At
lantiS from and eSpouses his cause, the
cause of the rich man, the practical
man, the unjust judge, and makes him
such a miserable fool that he could not
enjoy the beautiful work Of Shakes
peare, but must weave cipher some
where in ii, and such a cipher that Ed
gar A. Poe would have been ashamed of,
in order to tell the Donnellys of the fut-
ure that there was no Shakespeare. but
that there was Bacon, and, of course.
Donnel!y. Intellect has been at work
around the grave remains and produc-
tons of Shakespeare since very
little time after he died and, in
while he was yet alive, which is
on record. Milton wrote magnificent
sonnet. ITO My ShakSpere," calling
him Dear child of genius, great heir of
fame" And Milton only lived in the
next generation TO Shakespeare. The
one lived in the time of King James. the
other lived in the time of King Charles.
But Mr. Donncliy, who lives at Hast
mgs, MInn:. knows more OF this sub
Ject than Milton. His genius spans the
cycles, and being in the cycle business
he gives us plenty of ciDhers. A theo-
Logan explaining eternity and Donnelly
explaining Shakespeare are almost
equal tensions OF the imagination and
of the serious c0untenance.
=
The Shakespeare he would make for
us is neither scientific nor imaginative.
neither the great, firm, reasoning
power With & mighty mass of common
sense at its mead, nor the nimble, incis-
i've, luminous apprentice az the play
rights bench. When ColGmbus went