The LIGHTS of heaven go out and return;
When once our BRIEF CANDLE goes out,
One night is to be perpetually slept.
But soles are not ‘lights,’ and brevis lux is not ‘brief candle.’ If
they were, the passages have no resemblance. ‘To be, or not to be,’ is
‘taken almost verbatim from Plato.’ Mr. Donnelly says that Mr. Follett
says that the Messrs. Langhorne say so. But, where is the passage in
Plato?
Such are the proofs by which men ignorant of the classics prove that the
author of the poems attributed to Shakespeare was a classical scholar.
In fact, he probably had a ‘practicable’ knowledge of Latin, such as a
person of his ability might pick up at school, and increase by casual
study: points to which we return. For the rest, classical lore had
filtered into contemporary literature and translations, such as North’s
Plutarch.
As to modern languages, Mr. Donnelly decides that Shakespeare knew
Danish, because he must have read Saxo Grammaticus ‘in the original
tongue’--which, of course, is NOT Danish! Saxo was done out of the
Latin into French. Thus Shakespeare is not exactly proved to have been
a Danish scholar. There is no difficulty in supposing that ‘a clayver
man,’ living among wits, could pick up French and Italian sufficient for
his uses. But extremely stupid people are naturally amazed by even
such commonplace acquirements. When the step is made from cleverness
to genius, then the dull disbelieve, or cry out of a miracle. Now, as
‘miracles do not happen,’ a man of Shakespeare’s education could not
have written the plays attributed to him by his critics, companions,
friends, and acquaintances. Shakespeare, ex hypothesi, was a rude
unlettered fellow. Such a man, the Baconians assume, would naturally be
chosen by Bacon as his mask, and put forward as the author of Bacon’s
pieces. Bacon would select a notorious ignoramus as a plausible author
of pieces which, by the theory, are rich in knowledge of the classics,
and nobody would be surprised. Nobody would say: ‘Shakespeare is as
ignorant as a butcher’s boy, and cannot possibly be the person who
translated Hamlet’s soliloquy out of Plato, “Hamlet” at large out of the
Danish; who imitated the “Hellene” of Euripides, and borrowed “Troilus
and Cressida” from the Greek of Dares Phrygius’--which happens not to
exist. Ignorance can go no further than in these arguments. Such are the
logic and learning of American amateurs, who sometimes do not even know
the names of the books they talk about, or the languages in which they
are written. Such learning and such logic are passed off by ‘the less
than half educated’ on the absolutely untaught, who decline to listen to
scholars.
We cannot of course furnish a complete summary of all that the Baconians
have said in their myriad pages. All those pages, almost, really flow
from the little volume of Mr. Smith. We are obliged to take the points
which the Baconians regard as their strong cards. We have dealt with the
point of classical scholarship, and shown that the American partisans of
Bacon are not scholars, and have no locus standi. We shall take next
in order the contention that Bacon was a poet; that his works contain
parallel passages to Shakespeare, which can only be the result of
common authorship; that Bacon’s notes, called ‘Promus,’ are notes
for Shakespeare’s plays; that, in style, Bacon and Shakespeare are
identical. Then we shall glance at Bacon’s motives for writing plays by
stealth, and blushing to find it fame. We shall expose the frank folly
of averring that he chose as his mask a man who (some assert) could not
even write; and we shall conclude by citing, once more, the irrefragable
personal testimony to the genius and character of Shakespeare.
To render the Baconian theory plausible it is necessary to show
that Bacon had not only the learning needed for ‘the authorship of
Shakespeare,’ but that he gives some proof of Shakespeare’s poetic
qualities; that he had reasons for writing plays, and reasons for
concealing his pen, and for omitting to make any claim to his own
literary triumphs after Shakespeare was dead. Now, as to scholarship,
the knowledge shown in the plays is not that of a scholar, does not
exceed that of a man of genius equipped with what, to Ben Jonson, seemed
‘small Latin and less Greek,’ and with abundance of translations, and
books like ‘Euphues,’ packed with classical lore, to help him. With
the futile attempts to prove scholarship we have dealt. The legal and
medical lore is in no way beyond the ‘general information’ which
genius inevitably amasses from reading, conversation, reflection, and
experience.
A writer of to-day, Mr. Kipling, is fond of showing how easily a man of
his rare ability picks up the terminology of many recondite trades and
professions. Again, evidence taken on oath proves that Jeanne d’Arc,
a girl of seventeen, developed great military skill, especially in
artillery and tactics, that she displayed political clairvoyance, and
that she held her own, and more, among the subtlest and most hostile
theologians. On the ordinary hypothesis, that Shakespeare was a man of
genius, there is, then, nothing impossible in his knowledge, while
his wildly daring anachronisms could have presented no temptation to
a well-regulated scientific intellect like that of Bacon. The Baconian
hypothesis rests on the incredulity with which dulness regards genius.
We see the phenomenon every day when stupid people talk about people of
ordinary cleverness, and ‘wonder with a foolish face of praise.’ As Dr.
Brandes remarks, when the Archbishop of Canterbury praises Henry V. and
his universal accomplishments, he says:
Which is a wonder, how his grace should glean it,
Since his addiction was to courses vain,
His companies unletter’d, rude, and shallow,
His hours fill’d up with riots, banquets, sports
AND NEVER NOTED IN HIM ANY STUDY,
Any retirement, any sequestration,
From open haunts and popularity.
Yet, as the Archbishop remarks (with doubtful orthodoxy), ‘miracles are
ceased.’
Shakespeare in these lines describes, as only he could describe it, the
world’s wonder which he himself was. Or, if Bacon wrote the lines, then
Bacon, unlike his advocates, was prepared to recognise the possible
existence of such a thing as genius. Incredulity on this head could only
arise in an age and in peoples where mediocrity is almost universal. It
is a democratic form of disbelief.
For the hypothesis, as we said, it is necessary to show that Bacon
possessed poetic genius. The proof cannot possibly be found in his prose
works. In the prose of Mr. Ruskin there are abundant examples of what
many respectable minds regard as poetic qualities. But, if the question
arose, ‘Was Mr. Ruskin the author of Tennyson’s poems?’ the answer could
be settled, for once, by internal evidence. We have only to look at Mr.
Ruskin’s published verses. These prove that a great writer of ‘poetical
prose’ may be at the opposite pole from a poet. In the same way, we ask,
what are Bacon’s acknowledged compositions in verse? Mr. Holmes is their
admirer. In 1599 Bacon wrote in a letter, ‘Though I profess not to be
a poet, I prepared a sonnet,’ to Queen Elizabeth. He PREPARED a sonnet!
‘Prepared’ is good. He also translated some of the Psalms into verse, a
field in which success is not to be won. Mr. Holmes notes, in Psalm xc.,
a Shakespearean parallel. ‘We spend our years as a tale that is told.’
Bacon renders:
As a tale told, which sometimes men attend,
And sometimes not, our life steals to an end.