Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 309
than Sir John Spielman's establishment of 1588, concerning
which we find it said :
" '
Six hundred men are set to work by liirn.
That else might starve or seek abroad their bread,
Who now live well, and go full brave and trim,
And who may boast they are with paper fed. ' " 1
What Shakespeare lover is there who will not recall the echo
of the last words in Nathaniel's answer to his fellow pedant's
strictures upon the ignorance of Dull, the constable
Holofernes. Twice-sod simplicity, bis coctus !
0, thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look
Nathaniel. Sir; he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book ;
he hath not eat paper, as it were ; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is
not replenished, etc. 2
The supposed date of Love's Labour's Lost is 1588-9, precisely
the date of the establishment of our first great mill. Can the
poet, we wonder, have been en rapport with the inditer of the
lines quoted by Herring (who, by the way, omits to say whence
he quotes them) — and which of the two poets, if there were
two, originated the notion of men being fed with paver f
The omissions of Richard Herring, quite as much as his statements,
raise in our mind various misgivings and suspicions
concerning him and the information which he gives. Does this
writer know more than he "professes" to know? Are these
remarks, in which he draws in Shakespeare, hints to the initiated
reader as to the true facts of the case ? Like the Rosicrucians,
we cannot tell; but recent research leads us more and
more to discredit the notion that particulars such as these about
the establishment of the first
English paper-mill are unknown
to those whom they chiefly concern ; or that shifting, shadowy,
contradictory statements, of the kind quoted above, would
pass unchallenged, were it
not that an excellent mutual understanding
exists between the writer and his expert readers.
1 Herring, pp. 41-44. See also A Chronology of Paper and Paper-mak'uuj, by
Joel ilunsell, fourth edition, 1870.
2 Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2.