Chapter 10

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. Every one has 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 not
difficult for such an intellect to discover many irresistible
arguments in favor of such a scheme. He conducted the great case
of the Post Nati in the Exchequer Chamber; and the decision of the
judges--a decision the legality of which may be questioned, but the
beneficial effect of which must be acknowledged--was in a great
measure attributed to his dexterous management.

Again:

While actively engaged in the House of Commons and in the courts of
law, he still found leisure for letters and philosophy. The noble
treatise on the Advancement of Learning, which at a later period
was expanded into the De Augmentis, appeared in 1605

The Wisdom of the Ancients, a work which if it had proceeded from
any other writer would have been considered as a masterpiece of wit
and learning, was printed in 1609.

In the meantime the Novum Organum was slowly proceeding. Several
distinguished men of learning had been permitted to see portions of
that extraordinary book, and they spoke with the greatest
admiration of his genius.

Even Sir Thomas Bodley, after perusing the Cogitata et Visa, one of
the most precious of those scattered leaves out of which the great
oracular volume was afterward made up, acknowledged that "in all
proposals and plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master
workman"; and that "it could not be gainsaid but all the treatise
over did abound with choice