When Robert Groome was with me a month ago, I was speaking to him of having found some Bacon in Montaigne: and R. G. told me that you had observed the same, and were indeed collecting some instances; I think, quotations from Seneca, so employed as to prove that Bacon had them from the Frenchman. It has been the fashion of late to scoff at Seneca; whom such men as Bacon and Montaigne quoted: perhaps not Seneca's own, but cribbed from some Greek which would have been admired by those who scoff at the Latin. I had not noticed this Seneca coincidence: but I had observed a few passages of Montaigne's own, which seemed to me to have got into Bacon's Essays. I dare say I couldn't light upon all these now; but, having been turning over Essai 9, Lib. III. De la Vanite, I find one sentence which comes to the point: 'Car parfois c'est bien choisir de ne choisir pas.' In the same Essay is a piece of King Lear, perhaps; 'De ce mesme papier ou il vient d'escrire l'arrest de condemnation contre un Adultere, le Juge en desrobe un lopin pour en faire un poulet a la femme de son compaignon.' One doesn't talk of such things as of plagiarisms, of course; as if Bacon and Shakespeare couldn't have said much better things themselves; only for the pleasure of tracing where they read, and what they were struck by. I see that 'L'Appetit vient en mangeant' is in the same Essay. If I light some other day on the other passages, I will take the liberty of telling you. You see I have already taken the liberty of writing to a man, not unknown to me in several ways, but with whom I have not the pleasure of being acquainted personally. Perhaps I may have that pleasure one of these days; we are both connected with the same town of Beccles, and may come together. I hope so.