download PDF version: 47.1MB - Global Grey

226 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
edition contains, among many other letters, the one written
by Sir Toby Matthew to Bacon, showing the important,
the all-important postscriptum. MR. SPEDDING SUP
PRESSED THAT LETTER. And why did not Mr. Spedding,
who otherwise collected every scrap, include that letter in
his edition, a letter, the authenticity of which no one can,
no one ever did, doubt ? We know of one reason only. It
did not suit Mr. Spedding, after all the trouble he had gone
to, in publishing a goodly number of Bacon's works, to
hunt for the famous pseudonym to which Matthew alludes.
The truth revealed by the Northumberland Manuscript
Richard the Second and Richard the Third, by Francis Bacon)
lid not fit in with Mr. Spedding's calculations ;
the truth
revealed by Matthew's letter did not fit in with his calcula
tions either. He regretted having published the former, and
omitted the latter altogether from his edition. But an
edition of the Life and Works of Francis Bacon without
the Northumberland Manuscript, and without Toby
Matthew's letter with the postscriptum,
is not a complete
edition. We are indebted to Mr. Spedding for a great deal,
but it is to Mr. Basil Montagu that we owe the publication
of the words :
The most prodigious wit is of your Lordship's name, though he be
known by another.
In suppressing that all-important letter, Mr. Spedding had
made himself guilty of a great crime. He tried to do away
with something which did not suit him and many others.
Why else should it have been that very letter and no
other ?