great dramatist.”  Where is Spenser named, or Beaumont, or Chaucer, with whom Ben ranked Shakespeare?  Ben quoted of Bacon the line he wrote long before of Shakespeare as a poet, about “insolent Greece,” and all this is “remarkable,” and Mr. Greenwood finds it “not surprising” {262a} that the Baconians dwell on the “extraordinary coincidence of expression,” as if Ben were incapable of repeating a happy phrase from himself, and as if we should wonder at anything the Baconians may say or do.

Another startling coincidence is that, in Discoveries, Ben said of Shakespeare “his wit was in his own power,” and wished that “the rule of it had been so too.”  Of Bacon, Ben wrote, “his language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious.”  Thus Bacon had “the rule of his own wit,” Bacon “Could spare or pass by a jest,” whereas Shakespeare apparently could not—­so like were the two Dromios in this particular!  Strong in these convincing arguments, the Baconians ask (not so Mr. Greenwood, he is no Baconian), “were there then two writers of whom this description was appropriate . . .  Was there only one, and was it of Bacon, under the name of “Shakespeare,” that Ben wrote De Shakespeare nostrati?

Read it again, substituting “Bacon” for “Shakespeare.”  “I remember the players,” and so on, and what has Bacon to do here?  “Sometimes it was necessary that Bacon should be stopped.”  “Many times Bacon fell into those things could not escape laughter,” such as Caesar’s supposed line, “and such like, which were ridiculous.”  “Bacon redeemed his vices with his virtues.  There was ever more in Bacon to be praised than to be pardoned.”

Thus freely, according to the Baconians, speaks Ben of Bacon, whom he here styles “Shakespeare,”—­Heaven knows why! while crediting him with the players as his friends.  Ben could not think or speak thus of Bacon.  Mr. Greenwood occupies his space with these sagacities of the Baconians; one marvels why he takes the trouble.  We are asked why Ben wrote so little and that so cool ("I loved him on this side idolatry as much as any”) about Shakespeare.  Read through Ben’s Discoveries:  what has he to say about any one of his great contemporary dramatists, from Marlowe to Beaumont?  He says nothing about any of them; though he had panegyrised them, as he panegyrised Beaumont, in verse.  In his prose Discoveries he speaks, among English dramatists, of Shakespeare alone.

We are also asked by the Baconians to believe that his remarks on Bacon under the name of Shakespeare are really an addition to his more copious and infinitely more reverential observations on Bacon, named by his own name; “I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only proper to himself.”  Also (where Bacon is spoken of as Shakespeare) “He redeemed his vices by his virtues.  There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned . . .  Sometimes it was necessary that he should be stopped . . .  Many times he fell into those things that could not escape laughter.”