XIII 



FORTY YEARS OF BACON-SHAKESPEARE 

 FOLLY l 



SOME time ago, while I happened to be looking 

 over a wheelbarrow-load of rubbish written to 

 prove that such plays as " King Lear " and " The 

 Merry Wives of Windsor " emanated from one of 

 the least poetical and least humorous minds of mod- 

 ern times, I was reminded of a story which I heard 

 when a boy. I forget whether it was some whim- 

 sical man of letters like Charles Lamb, or some 

 such professional wag as Theodore Hook, who took 

 it into his head one day to stand still on a London 

 street, with face turned upward, gazing into the 

 sky. Thereupon the next person who came that 

 way forthwith stopped and did likewise, and then 

 the next, and the next, until the road was blocked 

 by a dense crowd of men and women, all standing 

 as if rooted in the ground, and with solemn sky- 

 ward stare. The enchantment was at last broken 



1 This article was published in the fortieth-anniversary num- 

 ber of The Atlantic Monthly, November, 1897. 



