EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT

volunteering to meet their emergencies and submitting letters and pleas to fit their cir cumstances. There were no newspapers, mag azines, nor periodical literature of any sort — courtiers were not so frequently in emergencies as to support a letter-writer. But there was the choice of writing for a theater or for a ^patron — the former paid cash, the latter allowed him to dine in the servants' hall. At any rate, Master Francis Bacon, for many long years, lived somehow between wind and water — keeping up appearances, receiving from his mother plenty of good advice where with to forefend — if he could — the wolf from his door. But, in the year 1593 (to be exact, as Mr. Spedding, who, two hundred years later, wrote the life of this young man, Francis Bacon, by name, enables us to be) on the seventeenth of April, 1593, this young Mr. Francis Bacon found himself in pressing need of something more tangible than good advice to pay his debts with. He implored •his mother, the Lady Ann Bacon, to consent to the sale of a parcel of land belonging to the estate of her late husband, Sir Nicholas, in which the Lady Ann had her dower and which could not be sold without her consent, so that Francis could realize his share therein in money. Lady Ann Bacon refused. There upon Francis applied to his elder brother, Anthony, to labor with his mother — repre sent to her his extremities and induce her to consent to the sale. Anthony did, and pre vailed. Lady Ann consented, and the sale was made and Francis was relieved. But again, on the twenty-fourth day of September, 1598 (I am following Mr. Spedding again) Francis was once more in debt, and this time his creditor — a Jew money-lender named Sympson — had him arrested and thrown into a spunging house. He who helps once, helps twice! and Francis again applied to his brother Anthony to rescue him from the Jew. And once again Anthony raised the money and released his younger brother. ' Antonio' — Anthony Bacon; ' Bassanio ' — Francis

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Bacon, — ' Shylock ' Sympson; — the year, 1593 — the play written and 'divers times acted ' until, its acting value being diminished, it is printed in broadside (as we say techni cally ' in Quarto ') in the year 1600. "Is not the coincidence a curious one? Was not an impecunious Bacon as well as an impecunious Bassanio looking for a ' lady richly left?' We need hardly the assurance of biography — which is, however, at hand — to guess that much." It must not be inferred, however, that Mr. Francis Bacon was an entirely Briefless Bar rister. My friend Hon. Charles E. Phelps, Judge of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore, discovered that, in Slade's Case (4 Rep. 91), Francis Bacon was of counsel, and associated with him as attorney on the same side Was a lawyer named John Halstaff. Says Judge Phelps (" Falstaff and Equity." Boston. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1901, p. 130, note): "The case was pending from 1596 to 1602. When the author of the first part of Henry' the Fourth found himself obliged in 1597 to find some other name to substitute for the offensive ' Sir John Oldcastle,' and to find it in a hurry, did he get the suggestion of Sir John Falstaff from the -name of John Halstaff?" CORPULENT TEXTS It is time that the profession registered a decisive protest against the excessive size to which the modern law book is being expanded. The accumulation of decisions compels a suffi cient increase of pages without the obvious attempt by large type, wide margins, and heavy paper, to expand a two volume work into a three volume edition. The authors contend that the customary price per volume does not provide a sufficient remuneration for the time required in the preparation of a modern work, but is their work worth more than buyers undeceived by devices are willing to pay? Shelf space alone is a consideration not to be neglected in these days of high rent.