to write verse as survive prove beyond all possibility of contradiction that, great as he was as a prose-writer and a philosopher, he was incapable of penning any of the poetry assigned to Shakespeare. Defective knowledge and illogical or casuistical argument alone render any other conclusion possible. LEE, SIDNEY, 1898, A Life of William Shakespeare, p. 373, Appendix.

It appears that the author of the plays took little care for their preservation, while Bacon took the greatest pains to preserve his acknowledged writings, even when their publication must be postponed; that he was familiar with English poetry, songs and plays, both published and unpublished, some of the latter having no existence, probably, outside of the theatres, while there is nothing to show that Bacon had any knowledge of or taste for such writings, or that he could have had access to the unpublished plays, and in fact it seems probable that he despised them all; that Shakespeare was known and recognized as a poet from poems of conspicuous merit and undoubted authenticity, while Bacon produced no poem worthy of notice, and with a single exception was never spoken of by his contemporaries as a writer of poetry; that the author, moreover, shows an acquaintance with Warwickshire, the home of Shakespeare, and used names and language relating to habits, customs, sports, there prevalent, and to occupations with which Shakespeare was familiar, and also used provincialisms there current, while Bacon is not known ever to have visited that part of England; that he was also steeped in knowledge of rural life, and of the customs and habitual modes of speech of the lower classes, which Bacon would naturally have less acquaintance with; that the plays abound

in anachronisms, historical errors, and obscurities and other peculiarities in the text, which Bacon was less likely than Shakespeare to fall into; and that the author was familiar with, and was full to repletion of allusions to, theatrical matters, and the habits and technical language of actors, which formed the daily life and speech of Shakespeare, while Bacon must have been less conversant if not entirely unacquainted with them. All of these circumstances tend in a greater or less degree to negative the theory of Baconian authorship; and the combined or cumulative force of so many detailed facts, all pointing in the same direction, is certainly a consideration of great weight. ALLEN, CHARLES, 1900, Notes on the BaconShakespeare Question, p. 237.

GENERAL.

?And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made
To mock her selfe, and Truth to imitate,
With kindly counter under Mimick shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late:
With whom all joy and jolly meriment
Is also deaded, and in dolour drent.

SPENSER, EDMUND, 1591, The Teares of the
Muses, Spenser's Works, ed. Collier, vol.
iv, p. 335.

As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare. Witness his Venus and Adonis; his Lucrece; his sugared Sonnets, among his pri

vate friends; &c. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latins: so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage. For Comedy: witness his Gentlemen of Verona; his (Comedy of) Errors; his Love's Labour's Lost; his Love's Labour's Won (? All's Well that Ends Well) his Midsummer Night's Dream; and his Merchant of Venice. For tragedy: his Richard II., Richard III., Henry IV., King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speak with Plautus's tongue, if they would speak Latin: so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase; if they would speak English. — MERES, FRANCIS, 1598, Palladis Tamia.

Honie-tong'd Shekespeare, when I saw thine issue,
I swore Apollo got them and none other,
Their rosie-tainted features cloth'd in tissue,
Some heaven born goddesse said to be their mother:
Rose-cheekt Adonis with his amber tresses,
Faire fire-hot Venus charming him to love her,
Chaste Lucretia virgine-like her dresses,

Proud lust-stung Tarquine seeking still to prove her.
Romea, Richard, more whose names I know not,
Their sugred tongues and power attractive beuty
Say they are Saints, althogh that Sts. they shew not
For thousands vowes to them subjective dutie:
They burn in love, thy children Shakespear het thẻ,
Go, wo thy Muse, more Nymphish brood beget them.
WEEVER, JOHN, 1599, Epigrammes in the Oldest
Cut and Newest Fashion.

Our English Terence. DAVIES, JOHN, OF HEREFORD, 1611, The Scourge of Folly, Works, ed. Grosart, p. 26.

Soule of the Age!

The applause! delight! the wonder of our Stage!
My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye
A little further, to make thee a roome:
Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe,
And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mixe thee so, my braine excuses;
I meane with great, but disproportion'd Muses:
For, if I thought my judgement were of yeeres,
I should commit thee surely with thy peeres,
And tell, how farre thou didstst our Lily outshine,
Or sporting Kid, or Marlowes mighty line.

And though thou hadst small Latine, and lesse Greeke,
From thence to honour thee, I would not seeke
For names; but call forth thund'ring Æschilus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,

Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,

To life againe, to heare thy Buskin tread,

And shake a Stage: Or, when thy Sockes were on,

Leave thee alone, for the comparison

Of all, that insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.

He was not of an age, but for all time!

And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When like Apollo he came forth to warme
Our eares, or like a Mercury to charme!
Nature her selfe was proud of his designes,
And joy'd to weare the dressing of his lines!
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other Wit.

Sweet Swan of Avon!

Shine forth, thou Starre of Poets, and with rage,

Or influence, chide, or cheere the drooping Stage;
Which, since thy flight frō hence, hath mourn'd like night,
And despaires day, but for thy Volumes light.

- JONSON, BEN, 1623, Shakespeare's Works, Pre-
face.

And though you be a Magistrate of wit, and sit on the Stage at Black-Friers, or the Cock-pit, to arraigne Playes dailie, know, these Playes have had their triall alreadie, and stood out all Appeales; and do now come forth quitted rather by a Decree of Court, then any purchas'd Letters of commendation. It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to have bene wished, that the Author himselfe had liv'd to have set forth, and overseen his owne writtings; But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to have collected & publish'd them; and so to have publish'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with diverse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, that expos'd them: even those, are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceived the. Who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers. But it is not our province, who onely gather his works, and give them you, to praise him. It is yours that reade him. And there we hope, to your divers capacities, you will finde enough, both to draw, and hold you: for his wit