Mr. Stephen assumes that Shakespeare explained this saucy little anagram to Bacon when the work was published, and that Bacon retaliated by “getting at” the printers of the folio after Shakespeare’s death, and inserting a cryptogram claiming the authorship for himself. Bacon is imagined to have said to himself, “If Shakespeare succeeds in claiming my philosophy, I will take his plays in exchange.” “He had become,” says our theorist, “demoralised to the point at which he could cheat his conscience by such lamentable casuistry.” In 1608 Bacon was Solicitor-General, and a rich man. He approached Shakespeare a second time with the object of having his great philosophical work continued. Three years afterwards, Shakespeare left the stage, and retired to pass the last five years of his life at Stratford. Why did he retire? “Because,” says Mr. Stephen, “Bacon had grown rich and could make it worth his while to retire to a quiet place where he would not be tempted to write plays, or drink at the ‘Mermaid,’ or make indiscreet revelations.” If it should be asked what he was doing, the answer is obvious. He was writing the _Novum Organum_. Baconians and Mr. Leslie Stephen are agreed that the _Novum Organum_ is the work of a poet, and that it was written by the author of the Plays. But if it is conceded that Shakespeare wrote _Novum Organum_, it still remains a mystery to Baconians as to who wrote Shakespeare. After Shakespeare’s death, Bacon, in _De Augmentis_, wrote that “the theatre might be useful either for corruption or for discipline; but in modern times there is plenty of corruption on the stage, and no discipline.” Mr. Stephen deduces from this that in order to aim a back-handed blow at Shakespeare, Bacon would blaspheme the art of which he claimed to be master--that he was, in fact, according to our other theorist, fouling the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of his _Instauratio Magna_. Neither of the theories we have just reviewed need be taken seriously. We know that Bacon himself gave an account of the scheme of the _Magna Instauratio_ in a section of the _Novum Organum_, called the _Distributio Operis_. The fourth book was to have contained examples of the “new method,” and of the results to which it led. The fifth was to contain what Bacon had accomplished in Natural Philosophy without the aid of his own method, and the sixth was to set forth the New Philosophy--the results of the application of the new method, and all the Phenomena of the Universe. Mr. Leslie Ellis tells us that Bacon never hoped to complete the sixth part; he speaks of it as a thing _et supra vires et ultra spes nostras collocata_. Mr. Leslie Stephen’s whimsical retort to the _Instauratio_ theory may be regarded as a _jeu d’esprit_. _The Case for Shakespeare._