In an article which recently appeared in a Shakespearean journal, a writer who evidently knows little about the Elizabethan period said: "But why should Bacon want to bury manuscripts, anyhow? Who does bury manuscripts? Besides, they had been printed and were, therefore, rubbish and waste paper merely." The manuscript of John Harrington's translation of Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" may be seen in the British Museum. It is beautifully written on quarto paper. It was, apparently, the fair copy sent to the printer from which the type was to be set up. Be this as it may, it was undoubtedly a copy upon which Bacon marked off the verses which are to go on each page and set out the folio of each page and the printer's signature which was to appear at the bottom. It also contains instructions to the printer as to the type to be used. This manuscript was not considered "rubbish and waste paper merely." Francis Bacon has again and again insisted upon the value of history. In the "Advancement of Learning" he points out to the King "the indignity and unworthiness of the history of England as it now is, in the main continuation thereof." No man appreciated as did Bacon the importance in the history of England of the epoch in which he lived. That a truthful relation of the events of those times would be invaluable to posterity he knew full well. He of all men living at that time was best qualified to write such a history. He recognised that there were objections to a history being written, or, at any rate, published, wherein the actions of persons living were described, for he said "it must be confessed that such kind of relations, specially if they be published about the times of things done, seeing very often that they are written with passion or partiality, of all other narrations, are most suspected." It is hardly conceivable that Bacon should have failed to provide a faithful history of his own times for the benefit of posterity, or, at any rate, that he should have failed to preserve the materials for such a history. Neither the history nor such materials are known to be in existence. Supposing Bacon had prepared either the one or the other, what could he do with it? Hand it to Rawley with instructions for it to be printed? With a strong probability, if it were a faithful history, that it would never be published, but that it would be destroyed, he would never take such a risk. There would only be one course open to him. To conceal it in some place where it would not be likely to be disturbed, in which it might remain in safety, possibly for hundreds of years. And then leave a clue either in cypher or otherwise by which it might be recovered.