Or shall I [Bacon] live your Epitaph to make, Or you [Shakespeare] survive when I in Earth am rotten, From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name [Shakespeare] from hence immortal life shall have, Though I [Bacon] once gone to all the world must die, The earth can yield me but a common grave, When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie, Your monument shall be my [not your] gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall ore read, And tongues to be your being [which as an author was not] shall rehearse, When all the breathers of this world are dead, You [Shakespeare] still shall live, such vertue hath my pen [not your own pen, for you never wrote a line] Where breathe most breaths even in the mouths of men. This Sonnet was probably written considerably earlier than 1609, but at that date Bacon's name had not been attached to any work of great literary importance. After the writer had learned the true meaning of Sonnet 81, his eyes were opened to the inward meaning of other Sonnets, and he perceived that Sonnet No. 76 repeated the same tale. "Why write I still all one, euer the same, And keep inuention in a noted weed, That euery word doth almost sel my name, Shewing their birth and where they did proceed?" (Sel may mean spell or tell or possibly betray.) Especially note that "Invention" is the same word that is used by Bacon in his letter to Sir Tobie Matthew of 1609 (same date as the Sonnets), and also especially remark the phrase "in a noted weed," which means in a "pseudonym," and compare it with the words of Bacon's prayer, "I have (though in a 'despised weed') procured the good of all men." [Resuscitatio, 1671.] Was not the pseudonym of the Actor Shakespeare a very "despised weed" in those days? Let us look also at Sonnet No. 78. "So oft have I enuoked thee for my Muse, And found such faire assistance in my verse, As every _alien_ pen hath got my use, And under thee their poesy disperse." Here again we should understand how to read this Sonnet as under:-- "So oft have I enuoked thee [Shakespeare] for my Muse, And found such faire assistance in my verse, As every _alien_ pen hath got my use, And under thee [Shakespeare] their poesy disperse." "Shakespeare" is frequently charged with being careless of his works and indifferent to the piracy of his name; but we see by this Sonnet, No. 78, that the real author was not indifferent to the false use of his pseudonym, though it was, of course, impossible for him to take any effectual action if he desired to preserve his incognito, his mask, his pseudonym. CHAPTER IX. Mr. Sidney Lee and the Stratford Bust.