Attributed to Shakespeare of Stratford they are meaningless,
they are inebriate extravagancies--intemperate admirations of the dark
side of the moon, so to speak; attributed to Bacon, they are admirations
of the golden glories of the moon's front side, the moon at the
full--and not intemperate, not overwrought, but sane and right, and
justified. "At ever turn and point at which the author required a
metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned FIRST to the
law; he seems almost to have THOUGHT in legal phrases; the commonest
legal phrases, the commonest of legal expressions, were ever at the end
of his pen." That could happen to no one but a person whose TRADE was
the law; it could not happen to a dabbler in it. Veteran mariners fill
their conversation with sailor-phrases and draw all their similes from
the ship and the sea and the storm, but no mere PASSENGER ever does it,
be he of Stratford or elsewhere; or could do it with anything resembling
accuracy, if he were hardy enough to try. Please read again what Lord
Campbell and the other great authorities have said about Bacon when they
thought they were saying it about Shakespeare of Stratford.

X

The Rest of the Equipment

The author of the Plays was equipped, beyond every other man of his
time, with wisdom, erudition, imagination, capaciousness of mind, grace,
and majesty of expression. Everyone one had said it, no one doubts it.
Also, he had humor, humor in rich abundance, and always wanting to
break out. We have no evidence of any kind that Shakespeare of Stratford
possessed any of these gifts or any of these acquirements. The only
lines he ever wrote, so far as we know, are substantially barren of
them--barren of all of them.

Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones And curst be he yt moves my bones.

Ben Jonson says of Bacon, as orator:

His language, WHERE HE COULD SPARE AND PASS BY A JEST, was nobly
censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily,
or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member
of his speech but consisted of his (its) own graces.... The fear of
every man that heard him was lest he should make an end.

From Macaulay:

He continued to distinguish himself in Parliament, particularly by his
exertions in favor of one excellent measure on which the King's heart
was set--the union of England and Scotland. It was n