Our Shakespeare scholars hereabouts are very impatient whenever the question of the authorship of the Plays and Poems is even alluded to. It must be spoken of, whether they like it or not."
But, according to Mr. Lee, this is all pure nonsense. "Why," he asks, "should the Baconian theorists have any following outside lunatic asylums? … Those who adopt the Baconian theory in any of its phases should be classed with the believers in the Cock Lane ghost, or in Arthur Orton's identity with Roger Tichborne. Ignorance, vanity, inability to test evidence, lack of scholarly habits of mind, are in each of these instances found to be the main causes predisposing half-educated members of the public [like Palmerston, Bright, Holmes, Bismarck] to the acceptance of the delusion ; and when any of the genuinely deluded victims have been narrowly examined, they have invariably exhibited a tendency to monomania."[1] I have no doubt the name?, dates, medical authorities, and other particulars of these examinations, can be supplied by Mr. Lee. The Baconians are not quite so cocksure, however, of anything as Mr. Lee is of everything. All they ask is that the Shakspereans will study the whole question, freeing themselves from pre-conceived ideas, and then meet the arguments seriatim. This is just what Mr. Sidney Lee will not or cannot do. Magna est Veritas, and it is truth
- ↑ Cf. Mr. Churton Collins:—"In all seriousness, this Baconian craze is a subject in which the student of morbid psychology is far more intimately concerned than the literary critic [e.g., Mr. Collins]. Ignorance and vanity can account for much; the Idols of the Cave and of the Market-place for more, but none of these, singly or collectively, can account for all … and so this ridiculous epidemic ["Epidemic disease."—Lee] spreads till it has now assumed the proportions, and many characteristics, of the dancing mania of the Middle Ages." Wonderful agreement—if not rgument—in two great minds!
