DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

[Arpy Dubya]

All is subject to speculation and interpretations until verified confession by its author.  Until then, what is Dr. OH saying in this poem? We know that he went to Stratford(twice). We also know that upon his second trip, he took his daughter, Amelia, of who kept a diary of the trip. We know that the eldest son, Wendell(Chief Justice) was a denier of the Stratford man as author. We also know that Conan Doyle named his Sherlock character after OH because of the respected attention to detail with deductions. So it is hard for me to believe this Holmes poem gives credence to Shaxpur. Anyone in this forum familiar with enough words in Holmes poem for perhaps the hints to someone else? Holmes also writes of his Stratford adventure in 'Our Hundred Days in Europe' which feels conflicting to any Stratford man support.

[Allisnum2er]

2 hours ago, Arpy Dubya said:

We also know that Conan Doyle named his Sherlock character after OH because of the respected attention to detail with deductions. So it is hard for me to believe this Holmes poem gives credence to Shaxpur. Anyone in this forum familiar with enough words in Holmes poem for perhaps the hints to someone else?

Thank you for sharing !

I must admit that I did not know DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES before your post.

I discovered that he is the man behind the following quote (that seems to have been misattributed to ... Mark Twain😊):

"The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession."

Talking about Shakespeare and Bacon , I like the fact that this quote comes from  "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" right after a reference to HAMLET.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/751/751-h/751-h.htm

"Wonder why authors and actors are ashamed of being funny?—Why, there are obvious reasons, and deep philosophical ones.  The clown knows very well that the women are not in love with him, but with Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and plumed hat.  Passion never laughs. 

The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.

If you want the deep underlying reason, I must take more time to tell it.  There is a perfect consciousness in every form of wit—using that term in its general sense—that its essence consists in a partial and incomplete view of whatever it touches.  It throws a single ray, separated from the rest,—red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade,—upon an object; never white light; that is the province of wisdom.  We get beautiful effects from wit,—all the prismatic colors,—but never the object as it is in fair daylight.  A pun, which is a kind if wit, is a different and much shallower trick in mental optics throwing the shadows of two objects so that one overlies the other.  Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always keeps its essential object in the purest white light of truth.—Will you allow me to pursue this subject a little further?"

Now, let's take a look near the end of his Poem, at "the tail of a procession".

Therefore we bid our hearts' Te Deum rise,
Nor fear to make thy worship less divine
And hear the shouted coral shake the skies,
Counting all glory, power and wisdom thine ;
For thy great gift thy greater name adore,
And praise thee evermore !

I know that it is speculation, but in acrostic we have F AACoN  that could stand for F 2ACoN # F  BACON 

"FOR THY GREAT GIFT THY GREATER NAME ADORE, AND PRAISE THEE EVERMORE".

EDIT :

I would add that "Te Deum" could be a reference to the mention of "Te Deum" by Shakespeare/ Bacon in Henry VIII Act IV scene 1 ( The passage mentionning York Place/ White-Hall, the Birth Place of Francis Bacon), and in Henry V Act IV scene 8 ...

https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/facsimile/book/Bran_F1/445/index.html%3fzoom=1200.html

Moreover, in the poem  there are 33 words from "Te  Deum" to "name".

33 = BACON

[Arpy Dubya]

Here is another interesting piece from Holmes, 'Epilogue from the Breakfast-Table' 

[Allisnum2er]

1 hour ago, Arpy Dubya said:

Here is another interesting piece from Holmes, 'Epilogue from the Breakfast-Table' 

I think that I found my Shakespeare in the 33 following words 😊 ...

The man beneath is still the same,

Laughing or sad, by fits and starts,

One actor in a dozen parts,

And whatsoev'er the mask may be,

The voice assures us, This is he.

https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/facsimile/book/Bran_F1/181/index.html%3fzoom=1200.html

[Allisnum2er]

Here is another interesting passage of   "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table".

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/751/751-h/751-h.htm

"I will thank you, B. F., to bring down two books, of which I will mark the places on this slip of paper.  (While he is gone, I may say that this boy, our land-lady’s youngest, is called Benjamin Franklin, after the celebrated philosopher of that name.  A highly merited compliment.)

I wished to refer to two eminent authorities.  Now be so good as to listen.  The great moralist says: “To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence.  He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the paternal till without remorse, and repeat the banquet of Saturn without an indigestion.”

And, once more, listen to the historian.  “The Puritans hated puns.  The Bishops were notoriously addicted to them.  The Lords Temporal carried them to the verge of license.  Majesty itself must have its Royal quibble.  ‘Ye be burly, my Lord of Burleigh,’ said Queen Elizabeth, ‘but ye shall make less stir in our realm than my Lord of Leicester.’  The gravest wisdom and the highest breeding lent their sanction to the practice.  Lord Bacon playfully declared himself a descendant of ’Og, the King of Bashan.  Sir Philip Sidney, with his last breath, reproached the soldier who brought him water, for wasting a casque full upon a dying man.  A courtier, who saw Othello performed at the Globe Theatre, remarked, that the blackamoor was a brute, and not a man.  ‘Thou hast reason,’ replied a great Lord, ‘according to Plato his saying; for this be a two-legged animal with feathers.’  The fatal habit became universal.  The language was corrupted.  The infection spread to the national conscience.  Political double-dealings naturally grew out of verbal double meanings.  The teeth of the new dragon were sown by the Cadmus who introduced the alphabet of equivocation.  What was levity in the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in the age of the Stuarts.”

I did not find any other reference to Lord Bacon playfully declaring himself a descendant of (h)Og, the King of Bashan, in any other book yet.

Could it be a clue ?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/27225170_Og_King_of_Bashan_Enoch_and_the_Books_of_Enoch_Extra-Canonical_Texts_and_Interpretations_of_Genesis_61-4

[Light-of-Truth]

I enjoyed this:

...You talk about reading Shakspeare, using him as an expression for the highest intellect, and you wonder that any common person should be so presumptuous as to suppose his thought can rise above the text which lies before him.  But think a moment.  A child’s reading of Shakspeare is one thing, and Coleridge’s or Schlegel’s reading of him is another.  The saturation-point of each mind differs from that of every other.  But I think it is as true for the small mind which can only take up a little as for the great one which takes up much, that the suggested trains of thought and feeling ought always to rise above—not the author, but the reader’s mental version of the author, whoever he may be.

I think most readers of Shakspeare sometimes find themselves thrown into exalted mental conditions like those produced by music.  Then they may drop the book, to pass at once into the region of thought without words.  We may happen to be very dull folks, you and I, and probably are, unless there is some particular reason to suppose the contrary.  But we get glimpses now and then of a sphere of spiritual possibilities, where we, dull as we are now, may sail in vast circles round the largest compass of earthly intelligences.

[Allisnum2er]

I think that I 've just found a possible explanation for the reference made by Holmes to Bacon and Og, the King of Bashan.

The answer could be in the work of Dr Samuel Johnson (who is mentioned several times by Holmes in "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table").

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25652077

It could be a reference to Dr Samuel Johnson's Dictionary :"Dictionary of the English Language" (1755)

Shakspeare - 33

https://www.google.fr/books/edition/A_Dictionary_of_the_English_Language_in/YHyTyj139-UC?hl=fr&gbpv=1

[Arpy Dubya]

Truth be told, it was O. Holmes that brought me to the Shakespeare question along with the enigmas in the text. My original school(of 8 yrs) comes from another unsolved authorship by the letters, S. W. E R D N A S E under two veils; the cover calls the book, 'The Expert At The Card Table' , while the title page calls the book, "Artifice Ruse and Subterfuge at the Card Table ''. Long story, short, my research and opinion believes this book was engineered by Oliver Holmes(and children) using state-of-the-art steganography methods that not only gives up the authorship goods but perhaps a personal discovery uncovered with the Shakespeare realm and re-hidded in a book of subject that would be kept alive and protected by its worshippers. This book was written(?) late 19th century in era of the advancement of the many minds disclosing their works on the Bacon-Shakespeare enigma. Thus my collection of all those mid/late 19th century to early 20th century books on that subject to get into the era's heads.