Macaulay scolds Scott as fiercely as Mr. Greenwood scolds Shakspere,- -for the more part, ignorantly and unjustly.  Still, there is matter to cause surprise and regret.  Both Scott and Shakspere are accused of writing for gain, and of spending money on lands and houses with the desire to found families.  But in the mysterious mixture of each human personality, any sober soul who reflects on his own sins and failings will not think other men’s failings incompatible with intellectual excellence.  Bacon’s own conduct in money matters was that of a man equally grasping and extravagant.  Ben Jonson thus describes Shakespeare as a social character:  “He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature . . .  I loved the man and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any.”  Perhaps Ben never owed money to Shakspere and refused to pay!

We must not judge a man’s whole intellectual character, and declare him to be incapable of poetry, on the score of a few legal papers about matters of business.  Apparently Shakspere helped that Elizabethan Mr. Micawber, his father, out of a pecuniary slough of despond, in which the ex-High Bailiff of the town was floundering,—­ pursued by the distraint of one of the friendly family of Quiney—­ Adrian Quiney.  They were neighbours and made a common dunghill in Henley Street. {171a} I do not, like Mr. Greenwood, see anything “at all out of the way” in the circumstance “that a man should be writing Hamlet, and at the same time bringing actions for petty sums lent on loan at some unspecified interest.” {171b} Nor do I see anything at all out of the way in Bacon’s prosecution of his friend and benefactor, Essex (1601), while Bacon was writing Hamlet.  Indeed, Shakspere’s case is the less “out of the way” of the two.  He wanted his loan to be repaid, and told his lawyer to bring an action.  Bacon wanted to keep his head (of inestimable value) on his shoulders; or to keep his body out of the Tower; or he merely, as he declares, wanted to do his duty as a lawyer of the Crown.  In any case, Bacon was in a tragic position almost unexampled; and was at once overwhelmed by work, and, one must suppose, by acute distress of mind, in the case of Essex.  He must have felt this the more keenly, if, as some Baconians vow, he wrote the sonnets to Essex.  Whether he were writing his Hamlet when engaged in Essex’s case (1601), or any other of his dramatic masterpieces, even this astonishing man must have been sorely bestead to combine so many branches of business.

Thus I would reply to Mr. Greenwood’s amazement that Shakspere, a hard creditor, and so forth, should none the less have been able to write his plays.  But if it is meant that a few business transactions must have absorbed the whole consciousness of Shakespeare, and left him neither time nor inclination for poetry, consider the scientific preoccupation of Bacon, his parliamentary duties, his ceaseless activity as “one