The Bacon- Shakespeare Folly 385 



perhaps soon after Ms arrival in London. This 

 seems to me not improbable. On the other hand, 

 " The Merchant of Venice " contains such crazy 

 law that it is hard to imagine it coming even from 

 a lawyer's clerk. At all events, we may safely say 

 that the legal knowledge exhibited in the plays is 

 no more than might readily have been acquired by 

 a man of assimilative genius associating with law- 

 yers. It simply shows the range and accuracy of 

 Shakespeare's powers of observation. 



Let us come now to the second part of the Delia 

 Bacon theory. Having satisfied herself that Wil- 

 liam Shakespeare could not have written the poems 

 and plays published under his name, she jumped 

 to the conclusion that Francis Bacon was the au- 

 thor. Surely, a singular choice ! Of all men, 

 why Francis Bacon ? * Why not, as I said before, 

 George Chapman or Ben Jonson, men who were 

 at once learned scholars and great poets? Chap- 

 man, like Marlowe, could write the " mighty line." 

 Jonson had rare lyric power; his verses sing, as 

 witness the wonderful " Do but look on her eyes," 

 which Francis Bacon could no more have written 

 than he could have jumped over the moon. To 



1 There is reason for believing that this choice was an instance 

 of the megalomania developed by Miss Bacon's malady. She 

 imagined a remote kinship between herself and Lord Bacon. 

 Possibly there may have been such kinship. 



