On turning to the revised version of the Bible it will be found that the first verse is thus translated: "The pride of the height, the cleare firmament the beauty of heaven with his glorious shew." The rendering of the text in "The French Academy" is strongly suggestive of Hamlet's famous soliloquy. "This most excellent canopy, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fritted with golden fire, why it appears to me no other than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." The author has forsaken the common-place rendering of the Apocrypha, and has adopted the same declamatory style which Shakespeare uses. It is strongly reminiscent of Hamlet's famous speech, Act II., scene ii. Only one of the Shakespeare commentators makes any reference to the work. The Rev. Joseph Hunter, writing in 1844, points out that the dramatist in "As You Like It," describing the seven ages of man, follows the division made in the chapter on "The Ages of Man" in the "Academie."[12] The suggestion now made is that the French "Academie" was written by Bacon, who is represented in the dialogues as Achitob--the first part when he was about 18 years of age, that he continued it until, in 1618, the complete work was published. In the dedication the author describes himself as a youth of immature experience, but the contents bear evidence of a wide knowledge of classical authors and their works, a close acquaintance with the ancient philosophies, and a store of general information which it would be impossible for any ordinary youth of such an age to possess. But was not the boy who at 15 years of age left Cambridge disagreeing with the teaching there of Aristotle's philosophy, and whose mental qualities and acquirements provoked as "the natural ejaculation of the artist's emotion" the significant words, "_Si tabula daretur digna animum mallem_," altogether abnormal? Was the "French Academie" Bacon's _temporis partus maximus_? It is only in a letter written to Father Fulgentio about 1625 that this work is heard of. Bacon writes: "Equidem memini me, quadraginta abhinc annis, juvenile opusculum circa has res confecisse, quod magna prorsus fiducia et magnifico titulo 'Temporis Partum Maximum' inscripsi."[13] Spedding says: "This was probably the work of which Henry Cuffe (the great Oxford scholar who was executed in 1601 as one of the chief accomplices in the Earl of Essex's treason) was speaking when he said that 'a fool could not have written it and a wise man would not.' Bacon's intimacy with Essex had begun about thirty-five years before this letter was written." Forty years from 1625 would carry back to 1585, the year preceding the date of publication of the first edition in English. If Cuffe's remark was intended to apply to the "French Academy," it is just such a criticism as the book might be expected to provoke.