prepared, the paths were made straight for Shakespeare."

Marlowe was slain June 1, 1593, and the first Shakespeare Play, Henry VI., appeared March 3, 1592; and yet there are high authorities who claim that part or all of Henry VI. was written by Marlowe! Swinburne finds that the opening lines of the second part of Henry VI. are aut Christophorus Marlowe aut diabolus. The Encyclopaedia Britannica thinks the "Contention between the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster," usually attributed to Shakespeare, was written by Marlowe; and Halliwell Phillipps finds striking coincidences between Marlowe's Edward II. and the Contention; and a line from the Jew of Malta, of Marlowe, reappears in the Third Part of Henry VI., attributed to Shakespeare. Marlowe says in his Doctor Faustus, speaking of Helen of Troy:

"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"

While Shakespeare (?) says in Troilus and Cressida, (11, 2), speaking also of the same Helen of Troy:

"She is a pearl,

Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships,
And turned crownded kings to merchants."

The Encyclopaedia Britannica says of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus:

"Few masterpieces of any age, in any language, can stand beside this tragic poem, for the qualities of terror and splendor, for intensity of purpose and sublimity of note,"

Hazlitt pronounces one scene in Marlowe's Edward II. certainly superior to a parallel scene in Shakespeare's Richard II.

There has been but one so-called "Shakespeare" in the five or ten thousand years of the recorded history of the human race; and yet we are asked to believe that two of them were born in England, in 1564, within two months of each other; and but for the knife of "a bawdy servingman" Marlowe would have developed as mighty a genius as that of Shakspere!

Is it not more reasonable to suppose, as stated on the tomb-stone, that both were but masks of the greatest intellect that ever dwelt on the planet-Francis Bacon?

CHAPTER XV.

"Bacon."

We have now got the words:

THE GREENE, MARLOWE and SHAKESPEARE PLAYES;

clearly expressed, in the very cipher of Francis Bacon, as set forth in his great work, the De Augmentis, on the grave-stone of the play-actor of Stratford, William Shakspere.

But what about them? What is the statement which that curious inscription was put there to declare to the world, when the world was ready to interpret it?

Let us go a little farther.

We repeat the last two lines of the inscription:

Τ

"Blese be T-E Man Y spares T-Es Stones

T

And curst be He Y moves my Bones."

As we saw SHAKE and other words resulting from the application of the Bacon cipher, alternately to the first and second lines of the inscription, let us see what the third and fourth lines will yield us, confining our

selves to that portion of the fourth line after the com

T

pound sign Y, and beginning at the end of the 3d line. Suppose we draw a line between the Y and T on the

T

fourth line, thus Y, and make that a starting point— like the dashes and periods, already considered.

We then have to the right of the line, “T move,” and if we place a b under the T and an a under each of the other letters, we have "baaaa," which, proceeding from left to right, is the cipher letter R; but proceeding from right to left it is the cipher letter B:-the first letter of the word BACON. We will learn hereafter something about the alternate manner in which these signs are to be read.

As the letter B came from the beginning of the fragment to the right of the dividing line between the sign

T

"Y", on the fourth line, the next letter, which is A, should come from the end of the third line. We turn to the end of the third line and there we have it :"Stones." Place an a under each of these five letters, "tones," and we have "aaaaa," the cipher symbol for A, already used once; but which is A, read from either end.

We return to the fourth line.

We saw that B, the first letter of Bacon, came from "T move."

The next letters are

"s my Bones."

Place an a under the small letters "s m y and o," and a b under the capital letter B, and we have: aaaba.

We turn to the alphabet, in the De Augmentis, and we find this stands for the letter C, the third letter of the word "Bacon.'

Now we found we obtained the second letter of Bacon, a, from the letters "tones," the conclusion of the word "Stones." Let us proceed towards the left again. What are the next five letters of the inscription? They are:

in the sentence:

T

"s T-Es S"

"Y spares T-Es Stones"

Place a b under the large letters and an a under the others, and the five letters "s T-Es S" will give us abbab, which constitutes the cipher letter O, the fourth letter of the word BACON.

The last letter having been found on the third line, the next must be found on the fourth line. But as we had exhausted all the combinations of five letters each when we reached "BO,” and there are but three letters left "nes" and we are at the end of the inscription, and can carry it no farther; we are constrained to move to the left, away from the end, and so we take the third group of letters from the end, which is

"e Y mo."

This becomes "abbaa," which is the symbol for N, the last letter of BACON.

Here the letters B A C O face each other in complete and perfect alternation, of line with line; and the last