The Bacon- Shakespeare Folly 357 



enough. The conclusion does not follow, however, 

 that he wrote the plays ; for there were other con- 

 temporaries with learning enough and to spare, as 

 for example George Chapman and Ben Jonson. 

 These two men, to judge from their acknowledged 

 works, were great poets, whereas in Bacon's fifteen 

 volumes there is not a paragraph which betrays 

 poetical genius. Why not, then, ascribe the Shake- 

 speare dramas to Chapman or Jonson ? Here the 

 Baconizers endeavour to support their assumption 

 by calling attention to similarities in thought and 

 phrase between Francis Bacon and the writer of 

 the dramas. Up to this point their argument con- 

 sists of deductions from assumed premises; here 

 they adduce inductive evidence, such as it is. We 

 shall see specimens of it by and by. At present 

 we are concerned with the initial syllogism. 



And first, as to the major premise, it must be 

 met with a flat denial. The Shakespeare plays do 

 not abound with evidences of scholarship or learn- 

 ing of the sort that is gathered from profound and 

 accurate study of books. It is precisely in this 

 respect that they are conspicuously different from 

 many of the plays contemporary with them, and 

 from other masterpieces of English literature. 

 Such plays as Jonson's " Sejanus " and " Catiline " 

 are the work of a scholar deeply indoctrinated with 



