The Bacon- Shakespeare Folly 399 



speare craze. What was it that first unlocked 

 the sluice-gates, and poured forth such a deluge 

 of foolishness upon a sorely suffering world? It 

 will hardly do to lay the blame upon poor Delia 

 Bacon. Her suggestions would have borne no fruit 

 had they not found a public, albeit a narrow one, 

 in some degree prepared for them. Who, then, 

 prepared the soil for the seeds of this idiocy to 

 take root? Who but the race of fond and fool- 

 ish Shakespeare commentators, with their absurd 

 claims for their idol ? During the eighteenth cen- 

 tury Shakespeare was generally underrated. Vol- 

 taire wondered how a nation that possessed such a 

 noble tragedy as Addison's " Cato " could endure 

 such plays as " Hamlet " and " Othello." In the 

 days of Scott and Burns a reaction set in ; and 

 Shakespeare worship reached its height when the 

 Germans took it up, and, not satisfied with calling 

 him the prince of poets and peerless master of 

 dramatic art, began to discover in his works all 

 sorts of hidden philosophy and impossible know- 

 ledge. Of the average German mind Lowell good- 

 naturedly says that " it finds its keenest pleasure 

 in divining a profound significance in the most 

 trifling things, and the number of mare's nests 

 that have been stared into by the German Gelehr- 

 ter through his spectacles passes calculation." * 

 1 Literary Essays, ii. 163. 



