lines together which are to be found in Bacon which could be mistaken for Shakespeare, or five lines in Shakespeare which could be mistaken for Bacon by one who was familiar with the several styles, and practised in such observation."

Well, granting that Bacon's style of writing morals and science and philosophy was not likely to resemble that of any play writer, I think the moral Essay from 2 Henry IV. V. i., which I have quoted, contains more than five lines which might easily be taken for Bacon masquerading as a merry and jesting knight. This is a test which may be within certain limits accepted, but it need not be pushed to the extreme of mistaking one for the other. Bacon pleading in court and Bacon speaking in Parliament or writing the Novum Organum might easily be taken not to be the same man. These styles are quite as different as either from Shakespeare, and yet there is no difficulty in accepting all as belonging to one man. If the test is fairly used, I contend that there are plenty of prose passages in Bacon and plenty of verse or prose in Shakespeare, which for stateliness of language, affluence of thought, elevation of sentiment, depth of meaning, felicity of metaphor, sparkle of antithesis and general force and beauty of style, are equally characteristic of both writers, assuming the separation. Hotspur's speech at the beginning of 1 Henry IV. II. iii. is a case in point, and there are many passages in Bacon which, by a little lawful manipulation, may easily be turned into good Shakespearean verse. The whole Essay of "Adversity" might be thus presented, and has been. (See Paper by the Author on "Bacon as a Poet," Trans. of Royal Soc. of Lit., Feb. 1893). There is a good deal of Baconian prose in the speeches of the Lord Chief Justice, 2 Hen. IV. I. ii.

There is a great collection of Antitheta, spoken antiphonally, by Gaunt and Bolingbroke, in reference to Bolingbroke's banishment; Gaunt speaks on the pro side; his son on the contra. (See Rich. II. I. iii. 258, &c.).

ANTITHETA ON BANISHMENT.

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CHAPTER XIII.

THE SCHOLARSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE.

THE classic knowledge and the classic diction of Shakespeare have caused much perplexity to his critics and biographers. That such a classic element exists-classic learning, and even more obviously, a classic aroma, a flavour or tone distinctive of classic culture, not to be otherwise acquired is obvious to the most superficial observer, and becomes increasingly evident as the poems are more carefully studied. The perplexity thus occasioned is shown by the contradictory ways in which the classic element is treated. Some critics, such as Richard Grant White, Cowden Clarke, and Charles Knight, frankly acknowledge it, and do not profess to explain it, or attempt to explain it away. Other critics, such as Leigh Hunt and Professor Baines, admit it and seek to account for it. Others deny it altogether.

Leigh Hunt makes no attempt to resist the proof of Shakespeare's learning, and thinks that Milton, singing of "native wood-notes wild " issuing from "sweetest Shakespeare fancy's child," spoke "without due reflection;" the words were, he thinks, "hastily said by a learned man of an unlearned." It is true, however, that Leigh Hunt accepts the current notions of Shakespeare's education in his time they had not been questioned, and consequently he is betrayed into an absurdity as gross as Milton's. "Shakespeare," he says, "though he had not a College education, was as learned as any man, in the highest sense of the word, —by a scholarly intuition; he had the spirit of learning."

It is strange how inevitably the wisest critics,-for

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among these we must reckon Leigh Hunt-talk in a selfcontradictory and irrational way when they attempt to account for Shakespeare's scholarship, while admitting that he had not much education. One would like to know the exact process of becoming "learned by scholarly intuition ;" and what this exactly means. The psychology of the case is somewhat obscure. Somehow it seems to be implied that there is some method by which all the results of classic scholarship can be acquired without the scholarship itself. Leigh Hunt proceeds: "He could anticipate Milton's own Greek and Latin

"Tortive and errant from his course of growth."
"The multitudinous seas incarnadine."

“A pudency so rosy,” etc.

"In fact, if Shakespeare's poetry has any fault it is that of being too learned, too over-informed with thought and allusion. His 'wood-notes wild' surpass Haydn and Bach. His wild roses were all twenty times double.' This is, of course, excellent criticism, and completely disposes of Milton's uncritical lines.

The poet most assuredly was no untutored child of nature, but a scholar and a man of the world-not an unconscious, spontaneous warbler of wild wood-notes, but the accomplished performer on a vast and complicated instrument, governing all the stops, and manuals, and pedals of a mighty organ, capable of gentlest diapason or resounding peals-now whispering the softest and simplest flute-notes of Arcady, now thundering forth in majestic trumpet tones the largest themes of the great world,—the music alternately swelling and subsiding, as joy and sadness, laughter and tears, passion and aspiration, youth and age, pour forth their appropriate melodies and harmonies: always indeed in touch with Nature, but always giving most perfect utterances to the choicest themes of refined and cultivated art.

According to Professor Baines, the ordinary grammar

schools of the sixteenth century were little classic Academes, where favoured students acquired the choicest culture that could be derived from the rarest fruits of

ancient history, poetry, and philosophy. Credat Judæus !

Other critics-and the large majority-deny scholarship altogether, and endeavour to explain away the apparent indications of it. The classic tone and diction are not to be accounted for except by drawing upon the infinite capabilities and possibilities of genius, whose shoulders are supposed to be broad enough to bear, like Atlas, not only the round world, but all the fulness thereof, including Alexandrine, Bodleian, and British Museum libraries.

It is not a little remarkable that so sane and wellinformed an annotator as Cowden Clarke should resort to this theory of quasi supernaturalism in accounting for the learning of Shakespeare. In commenting on the wordsThe ruddy drops that visit my sad heart,

this learned and sagacious critic says:—

(Ful. Cæs. II. i. 289)

"It has been said that in these glowing words Shakespeare has anticipated Harvey's discovery of the circulation. of the blood, which was made in 1608. The poet's intuition taught him many secrets of nature as yet unpromulgated by science to the world, as well as many of those known only to adepts in their several branches of science; and that he had intuitive perception on the subject of the blood's course through the body, witness not only the present passage, but also that gloriously expressive one in Meas. Meas. II. iv., where Anglo exclaims: 'Oh, heavens! why does my blood thus muster to my heart?'" etc. So far as classic knowledge is explained, it might be

*

* I cannot help thinking that Mr. and Mrs. Cowden Clarke had a shrewd suspicion, which they would not distinctly express, that the Stratford rustic was not the real Shakespeare. See their note to the passage in Meas. Meas. III. i. 118-quoted in Chap. XIV.,-under the section Delated.