ntry lad to become the poet pre-eminent in English literature. But
this question is not to be decided by _a priori_ reasoning. The genius
displayed in the dramatic works under consideration is little less than
miraculous. This all concede. Now, history has shown that to genius
there is a sense in which "all things are possible." Genius can cross
the Alps, can conquer Europe, can dumfound the world. Genius knows no
rules. Once allow genius, and the problem is solved. It is conceded
that for a common man, or even for one of exceptional ability, to have
acquired without help the learning which characterizes the works of
Shakespeare is impossible. But the man who wrote Hamlet was no
mediocre, be he Bacon or Shakespeare. He was a superlative genius.
This fact admitted, we need have no difficulty with the problem. It
becomes a question a child can answer. The "myriad-minded Shakespeare"
could do what to an ordinary, or even extraordinary, man would be an
absolute impossibility. One critic discovers Shakespeare to be a
musician; another, a classical scholar; and so he has been claimed in
almost every field. He was not all. So critics confound us. They
also confound themselves. The genius which could write the plays could
master all these, though he squandered his youth. Let the history of
genius guide from this labyrinth. Was not Caesar orator, general,
historian? Was not Napoleon the same? Does not genius destroy all
demonstrations with reference to itself? Do not Pascal, Euler, Da
Vinci, and Angelo confound us? How dare we dogmatize as to the doings
of genius? Read Shakespeare, and find you can not discover the
characteristic of the man. You can not in his writings read his
interior life. David Copperfield may display Dickens, and Byron's
poems may give us the author's autobiography, and Shelley's writings
may give a photograph of his intellectual self; but Shakespeare's plays
give no clew to his character. He is all. He grovels in Falstaff; he
towers in Prospero. He smites all strings that have music in them. He
baffles us like a spirit, hiding himself in darkness. To attribute the
authorship of the plays to Bacon is, to my thought, not to rid us of
our difficulty, but rather to increase difficulty. Bacon we know. He
was jurist, statesman, natural philosopher. Add to these the
possibility of his having written Shakespeare, and the magnificence of
his achievement would dwarf that of Shakespear