Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-02-23

satisfaction. little kissing sound-the
kind of thing that fascinates one after it
has been repeated a few times and some
times makes him forget what the person
who uses it is saying in the absorption
of waiting for it,
Sir Edwin received me in his library.
huge room whose windows command a
fine view of the historic Mall I'm st.
James Park, on which. by miracle. the
sun happened to be shining. Two hum
dred and fifty thousand dollars seems, on
the whole, low estimate to put on the
rare works i'm many languages which line
it's shelves from floor to ceiling. Sir Ed
win processes, at any rate. not to know
how many there are of Them the one
thing certain being that they all bear in
some way or another on the mystery of
Bacon" of whom the baronet speaks with
exactly the same reverence with which
religious folk speak of God.
y *
He talks of his books as loving parent
does of his babes. and handles them as
tenderly Some of them are the only
copies of the particular work i'm England,
and students who so to the British Mu-
scum, with it's 100000 books. in the hope
of consulting them, have to be referred to
Sir Edwin by the museum authorities.
The American authoress of The Bi-lit-
eral CIPHER of Francis Bacon" was one
such. and though the baronet did not
Scruple to refer to Mrs. Gallup as that
Internal woman and that mad, stupid
idiot" for, as he said, purposely mislead-
ing those who would have followed In her
footsteps. he expressed his admiration for
and agreement with all she wrote. lgna-
thus Donnellys book, which first interested
Sir Edwin in the Acknowledgements ques-
ton, the baronet described as the cleV-
crest ever written.
One book in his collection which he
viii RI
Sponsors "Faerie Queens, which be-
longed to Charles ii. and another tiny
COPY of the original edition of Bacon
ESSAYS published in 1881
Another little book just like this went
down with G. ID. Widener, the American
collector. in the Titanic. he said as he
showed it. He paid two thousand guineaS
(S1O,OO0) for it. There We're only 400 copies
printed. Widener got one. | got another.
And then he gave his little, "S-s-s-s.'
The writer called on Sir Edwin expect
ing to find him an out-and-out fanatic
and left a wee bit impressed. Sir Edwin
does not succeed in convincing one that
Bacon wrote Shakespeare, to say moth
ing of being as the baronet believes, the
inventor of shorthand and the author of
the whole of the Eliza bethan literature,
but when he has put before one the
most striking of the queer discoveries
that he has made in his twenty-five years
of digging (and not just the funny ones
that get quoted in the neWspapers) ne
leaves one with an uneasy conviction
that as he himself says, it hardly can
be "all accident This much is certain,
that If Sir Edwin is a fool about Bacon
he deserves to be called, as was King
James of Scotland, 1.-The wisest fool N
Christendom" for he is absolutely steep
Iora of Eo arin in ~
so vitality interested.
Il never forget anything" is the only
bouquet he will throw at himself, and he
will refer you to some statement in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica Second edi-
tion) to some date in the time of Queen
Elizabeth, the exact page on which
F1orio or Ben JonSon or MarloWe used
"a certain phrase as airily as You or l
would quote a line from Omar or joke
by Gelett Burgess.
Let us take Sir Edwin seriously, just
for a minute, and see how he supports his
queer conclusions. His pigs and sows
and ''hang-hogs" are the least Of the
curious evidence upon which he has hit
to prove that Bacon wrote the works in
which they appear Sir Edwin believes
that Bacon wrote these works because. as
he asserts, there was no one else capa bic
of writing them. Sir Philip Sidney, Mar
lowe. Ben Jonson and the rest being, ac-
cording to him, more capable Of writ
ing the works attributed them than was
the drunken. illiterate clown of STRAIT
ford on-A Avon of writing the immortal
plays that bear his name on their title
pages. The Bard" as one might expect
is Sir Edwins bette noir. According to
nor even write his own name, and Sir
Edwin .WhO~WaS. a LAWYER before n o. went