Both sides assume to be omniscient, but we incontestably know much more about Bacon, in his works, his aims, his inclinations, and in his life, than we know about the actor; while about “the potentialities of genius,” we know—­very little.

Thus, with all Bacon’s occupations and preoccupations, he had, the Baconians will allow, genius.  By the miracle of genius he may have found time and developed inclination, to begin by furbishing up older plays for a company of actors:  he did it extremely well, but what a quaint taste for a courtier and scholar!  The eccentricities of genius may account for his choice of a “nom de plume,” which, if he desired concealment, was the last that was likely to serve his turn.  He may also have divined all the Doll Tearsheets and Mrs. Quicklys and Pistols, whom, conceivably, he did not much frequent.

I am not one of those who deny that Bacon might have written Hamlet “if he had the mind,” as Charles Lamb said of Wordsworth.  Not at all; I am the last to limit the potentialities of genius.

But suppose, merely for the sake of argument, that Will Shakspere too had genius in that amazing degree which, in Henry V, the Bishop of Ely and the Archbishop of Canterbury describe and discuss in the case of the young king.  In this passage we perceive that the poet had brooded over and been puzzled by the “miracle” (he uses the word) of genius.  Says Canterbury speaking of the Prince’s wild youth,

“Never was such a sudden scholar made.”

One Baconian objection to Shakespeare’s authorship is that during his early years in London (say 1587-92) he was “such a sudden scholar made” in various things.

The young king’s

“addiction was to courses vain, His companies unletter’d, rude, and shallow,”

precisely like Shakespeare’s courses and companions at Stratford

“Had never noted in him any study.”

Stratford tradition, a century after Shakespeare left the town, did not remember “any study” in him; none had been “noted,” nor could have been remembered.  To return to Henry, he shines in divinity, knowledge of “commonwealth affairs,”

“You would say, it hath been all in all his study.”

He is as intimate with the art of war; to him “Gordian knots of policy” are “familiar as his garter.”  He MUST have

“The art and practic part of life,”

as “mistress to this theorie,”

“Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it,”

as his youth was riotous, and was lived in all men’s gaze,

“And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.”

The Bishop of Ely can only suggest that Henry’s study or “contemplation”

“Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen,”

and Canterbury says