," were
also by this same Shakespeare who had written the poems of "Venus and
Adonis" and "Lucrece."
Francis Meres says: "As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in
Pythagoras so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and
honytongued Shakespeare, witnes his 'Venus and Adonis,' his 'Lucrece,'
his sugred Sonnets among his private friends."
The Sonnets were not printed, so far as is known, before 1609, and they
as has been shown in Chapter 8 repeat the story of Bacon's authorship of
the plays.
Bacon in 1598, as we have stated in previous pages, fully intended that
at some future period posterity should do him justice.
Among his last recorded words are those in which he commends his name
and fame to posterity, "after many years had past." Accordingly we find,
as we should expect to find, that when he put Shakespeare's name to
"Loues Labor's lost" (the first play to bear that name) Bacon took
especial pains to secure that at some future date he should be
recognised as the real author. Does he not clearly reveal this to us by
the wonderful words with which the play of "Loues Labor's lost" opens?
"Let Fame, that all hunt after in their lyues,
Liue registred vpon our brazen Tombes,
And then grace vs, in the disgrace of death:
When spight of cormorant deuouring Time,
Thendeuour of this present breath may buy:
That honour which shall bate his sythes keene edge,
And make us heires of all eternitie.
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