The Bacon- Shakespeare Folly 369 



" Then to the well-trod stage anon, 

 If Jonson's learned sock be on, 

 Or sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child, 

 Warble his native woodnotes wild." 



This accurate and happy contrast exasperates the 

 Baconizers, for it spoils their stock in trade, and 

 accordingly they try their best to assure us that 

 Milton did not know what he was writing- about. 

 They asseverate with vehemence that in all the 

 seven-and-thirty plays there is no such thing as a 

 native woodiiote wild. 



But before leaving the contrast we may pause 

 for a moment to ask, Where did Ben Jonson get 

 his learning? He was, as he himself tells us, 

 " poorly brought up " by his stepfather, a brick- 

 layer. He went to Westminster School, where he 

 was taught by Camden, and he may have spent a 

 short time at Cambridge, though this is doubtful. 

 His schooling was nipped in the bud, for he had to 

 go home and lay brick ; and when he found such 

 an existence insupportable he went into the army 

 and fought in the Netherlands. At about the age 

 of twenty we find him back in London, and there 

 lose sight of him for five years, when all at once 

 his great comedy " Every Man in his Humour " is 

 performed, and makes him famous. Now, in such 

 a life, when did Jonson get the time for his im- 

 mense reading and his finished classical scholar- 



