CHAPTER XII SHAKESPERE IF Shakespere had written some work of consequence in prose, no doubt it would have surpassed the prose of others, as has his poetry overtopped the singers of all time. In his plays he seldom condescends to prose, his regal spirit moves more naturally in metre. Of But when he desires to make us laugh he perceives that the appropriate vehicle for his fun is prose. such exercise of his wit, Touchstone's discourse on the cause of a quarrel in As You Like It is a most diverting instance : "Jacques.-How did you find the quarrel on the seventh cause ? 66 Touchstone.-Upon a lie seven times removed-as thus, Sir. I did dislike the cut of a certain courtier's beard he sent me word, if I said his beard was not cut well, he was in the mind it was. This is called 'the retort courteous.' "If I sent him word again it was not well cut, he would send me word he cut it to please himself. This is called the quip modest.' 66 'If again it was not well cut, he disabled my judgement. This is called the 'reply churlish.' 'If again it was not well cut, he would answer I spake not true. This is called the 'reproof valiant.' If again it was not well cut, he would say I lie. This is called the countercheck quarrelsome' lie circumstantial' and the 'lie direct.' and so to the Jacques. And how oft did you say his beard was not well cut? Touchstone.—I durst go no further than the 'lie circumstantial,' nor he durst not give me the 'lie direct,' and so we measured swords and parted. Jacques.-Can you nominate in order now the degrees of the lie ? Touchstone.-O Sir, we quarrel in print; by the book, as you have books for good manners: I will name you the degrees. 6 The first the 'retort courteous'; the second the 'quip modest'; the third the reply churlish'; the fourth the reproof valiant '; the fifth the countercheck quarrelsome'; the sixth the 'lie with circumstance'; the seventh the 'lie direct.' All these you may avoid but the lie direct; and you avoid that too with an 'if.’ "I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel; but when the parties met themselves, one of them thought but of an 'if,' as 'if you said so, then I said so '; and they shook hands and swore brothers. 66 Your 'if' is the only peacemaker, much virtue in an 'if.'" How anyone with the slightest literary apprehension could imagine that Bacon could write this amusing monologue is quite inexplicable. But there are some who, while not asserting that Bacon wrote the plays, are quite satisfied in their own minds that Shakespere never wrote them, whoever the author may have been. I must admit that I have not devoted much of my time to following their arguments. It cannot be denied that Ben Jonson was a capable man of letters, that he was an intimate friend of Shakespere, and that he never for a moment doubted that he wrote the plays. He wrote thus: "I remember the players often mentioning it as an honour to Shakespere, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been: Would he had blotted a thousand,' which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted, and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man and do honour to his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. "He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped." This passage shows that not only Ben Jonson, but Shakespere's fellow-players, never doubted his authorship, and indeed the players seem to have known in what manner he actually penned their parts for them. But if it gives pleasure to people to devote much time and labour to endeavouring to persuade mankind that Shakespere could not write the plays because his birth and education made it improbable, or that Keats could not have written his poems because his father was a stableman and himself a chemist's assistant who knew no Greek, there is no reason to deprive them of it. There are the plays of one, and the poems of the other, with their names on the title-pages, and our enjoyment of both suffers no abatement from these dull lucubrations. Archbishop Whateley wrote a delightful essay entitled "Historic doubts concerning Napoleon Buonaparte," in which he propounds the theory that no such person ever really existed. But I am afraid the delightful humour of the Archbishop does not inform the pens of these others. John Burroughs has always seemed to me rightly to express the proper attitude we ought all to adopt in this matter. He says: "To dig into the roots and origin of the great poets is like digging into the roots of an oak or maple the better to increase your appreciation of the beauty of the tree. 66 There stands the tree in all its summer glory. Will you really know it any better after you have laid bare every root and rootlet? "There stand Homer, Dante, Chaucer, and Shakespere. Read them, give yourself to them, and master them if you are man enough. 66 The poets are not to be analysed; they are to be enjoyed; they are not to be studied but to be loved; they are not for knowledge but for culture--to enhance our appreciation of life and our mastery over its elements. 66 All the mere facts about a poet's work are as chaff as compared with the appreciation of one line or fine sentence. "Why study a great poet at all after the manner of a dissecting-room? "Why not rather seek to make the acquaintance of his living soul and to feel its power? Let us take Ben Jonson's word for it that Shakespere wrote his plays, and remember that genius descends on whom she will with disconcerting indifference to the origin, education, and all other circumstances of her children. I may mention that Sir Henry Irving and Sir Herbert Tree, with both of whom I have in times past discussed this matter, were of opinion that the technical knowledge of the stage shown in such of Shakespere's plays as they put on the stage left their minds without a doubt that the person who wrote them was himself an actor. As both these illustrious ornaments of our stage spent much of their lives in the intimate familiarity with Shakespere necessary for producing his works, I think we may prefer their mature judgment to the lucubrations of a wilderness of writers in the closet. CHAPTER XIII LORD CHIEF JUSTICE CREWE, LORD MANSFIELD, IT is one of the misfortunes of the legal profession that for the most part all the erudition, eloquence, and wisdom delivered from the bench, and much of the fervid oratory of the bar, either lie deep buried in musty old law reports or being unreported are lost for ever. Many judges with literary gifts have wasted on the arid air of the Law Courts what would have delighted mankind. A few stuffy solicitors and indifferent barristers have not seldom listened to judgments delivered in language of noble and solemn splendour, unconscious of the privilege that was theirs, interested only in the substance of the decision and not at all in the vehicle of its conveyance. A few of such judgments have survived the dust of centuries, and one delivered by Lord Chief Justice Crewe nearly four hundred years ago, in the case of the Earl of Oxford, I will now cite : "I heard a great peer of this realm, and learned, say, when he lived, there was no king in Christendom had such a subject as Oxford. He came in with the Conqueror, Earl of Guienne; shortly after the Conquest made Great Chamberlain, above 400 years ago, by Henry I., the Conqueror's son; confirmed by Henry II. This great honour-this high and noble dignity-hath continued ever since, in the remarkable surname of De Vere, by so many ages, descents, and generations, as no other kingdom can produce such a peer in one and the selfsame name and |