Bacon wrote down ‘Good morrow’ just because it WAS in common use. All the formulae were in common use; probably ‘Golden sleepe’ was a regular wish, like ‘Good rest.’ Bacon is making a list of commonplaces about beginning the day, about getting out of bed, about sleep. Some are in English, some in various other languages. He is not, as in Mrs. Pott’s ingenious theory, making notes of novelties to be introduced through his plays. He is cataloguing the commonplace. It is Mrs. Pott’s astonishing contention, as we have seen, that Bacon probably introduced the phrase ‘Good morrow!’ Mr. Bucke, following her in a magazine article, says: ‘These forms of salutation were not in use in England before Bacon’s time, and it was his entry of them in the “Promus” and use of them in the plays that makes them current coin day by day with us in the nineteenth century.’ This is ignorant nonsense. ‘Good morrow’ and ‘Good night’ were as familiar before Bacon or Shakespeare wrote as ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good night’ are to-day. This we can demonstrate. The very first Elizabethan handbook of phrases which we consult shows that ‘Good morrow’ was the stock phrase in regular use in 1583. The book is ‘The French Littelton, A most Easie, Perfect, and Absolute way to learne the Frenche Tongue. Set forth by Claudius Holyband. Imprinted at London by Thomas Vautrollier, dwelling in the blacke-Friers. 1583.’ (There is an edition of 1566.) On page 10 we read:-- ‘Of Scholars and Schoole. ‘God give you good morrow, Sir! Good morrow gossip: good morrow my she gossip: God give you a good morrow and a good year.’ Thus the familiar salutation was not introduced by Bacon; it was, on the other hand, the very first formula which a writer of an English-French phrase-book translated into French ten years before Bacon made his notes. Presently he comes to ‘Good evening, good night, good rest,’ and so on. This fact annihilates Mrs. Pott’s contention that Bacon introduced ‘Good morrow’ through the plays falsely attributed to Shakespeare. There follows, in ‘Promus,’ a string of proverbs, salutations, and quotations, about sleep and waking. Among these occur ‘Golden Sleepe’ (No. 1207) and (No. 1215) ‘Uprouse. You are up.’ Now Friar Laurence says to Romeo:-- But where unbruised youth with unstuffed brain Doth couch his limbs, there GOLDEN SLEEP doth reign: Therefore thy earliness doth me assure, Thou art UP-ROUSED by some distemperature.