peculiar Notion of the Times.”  Ben died in 1637; his Ms. collection of notes and brief essays, and reflections, was published in 1641.  Bacon, of whom he wrote his impressions in this manuscript, had died in 1626.  Ben was no longer young:  he says, among these notes, that his memory, once unusually strong, after he was past forty “is much decayed in me . . .  It was wont to be faithful to me, but shaken with age now . . . (I copy the extract as given by Mr. Greenwood. {255a}) He spoke sooth:  he attributes to Orpheus, in “Timber,” a line from Homer, and quotes from Homer what is not in that poet’s “works.”

In this manuscript occurs, then, a brief prose note, headed, De Shakespeare nostrati, on our countryman Shakespeare.  It is an anecdote of the Players and their ignorance, with a few critical and personal remarks on Shakespeare.  “I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line.  My answer hath been, ’Would he had blotted a thousand,’ which they thought a malevolent speech.  I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by (that) wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any.  He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped.  ‘Sufflaminandus erat,’ as Augustus said of Haterius.  His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too!  Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, ’Caesar, thou dost me wrong.’  He replied, ‘Caesar did never wrong but with just cause’; and such like, which were ridiculous.  But he redeemed his vices with his virtues.  There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.”  Baconians actually maintain that Ben is here speaking of Bacon.

Of whom is Ben writing?  Of the author of Julius Caesar,—­certainly, from which, his memory failing, he misquotes a line.  If Ben be in the great secret—­that the author was Bacon, or Mr. Greenwood’s Great Unknown, he is here no more enthusiastic about the Shadow or the Statesman, than about Shakespeare; no less cool and critical, whoever may be the subject of his comments.  Whether, in the commendatory verses, he referred to the Actor-Author, or Bacon, or the Shining Shadow, or all of them at once, he is now in a mood very much more cool and critical.  If to be so cool and critical is violently inconsistent in the case of the Stratford actor, it is not less so if Ben has Bacon or the Shadow in his mind.  Meanwhile the person of whom he speaks is here the actor-author, whom the players, his friends, commended “wherein he faulted,” namely, in not “blotting” where, in a thousand cases, Ben wishes that he had blotted.  Can the most enthusiastic Baconian believe that when Ben wrote about the players’ ignorant applause of Shakespeare’s, of their friend’s lack of care in correction, Ben had Bacon in his mind?