IX. MAY 24, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
419
decessors in the study of Shakespeare, Judge Webb
presents as two separate men the Stratford player
and the author of ' Venus and Adonis,' ' The Rape
of Lucrece,' and the plays contained in the first
folio. In order to avoid the possibility of mistake
the player is always spoken of as Shakspere, the name
into which that of the Stratford family ultimately
crystallized. The author meanwhile is as invariably
called William Shakespeare. Starting from this
point, Judge Webb has produced an ingenious, eru-
dite, and closely reasoned book, the aim of which is
to establish that William Shakespeare is, in fact,
Francis Bacon. Of the numerous volumes pro
and con. on the question which crowd our table
soliciting our attention this is the most consider-
able. Its arguments are not to be answered off-
hand, and a complete refutation of what is ad-
vanced would involve a labour from which all but
'intentional participators in what after all is a
silly discussion will be disposed to shrink. We
[find the writer, however, an advocate rather than
a judge, and hold much that he says to be prejudiced
and unfair. As regards the difference in name on
f which Judge Webb elects to dwell, he will scarcely
deny that in Elizabethan names spelling is a matter
f of no consequence. Dekker's name was spelt a dozen
\ different ways, and a century later a name so
plain as Gibber could be converted into Keyber.
We do not assert that Judge Webb founds what
can exactly be called an argument upon the spell-
ing of the names, but he obviously regards it as of
importance. Like a skilled counsel, moreover, he
unduly depreciates and disparages the position of
the defendant, as we must hold Shakespeare to be
if we assume this to be an action. To speak of
Shakespeare we beg pardon, we mean " Shak-
spere " as "the uneducated or half - educated
young countryman from Stratford " involves
what our author must see is a petitio principii.
Again, we are told that "all the traditions
about the young man are of a degrading charac
ter," a view which we immediately reject. The
fact that when a youth Shakespeare with other
lads chased the king's deer, probably in sport,
, no more stamps him as a poacher than the
fact that some of us in boyhood robbed an appL
orchard stamps us as thieves. If there is one
thing which mislikes us in the treatment o:
Shakespeare by his biographers in general, it is the
effort to free him from every customary infirmity o
adolescence in early manhood and show him as a
" faultless monster which the world ne'er saw."
Whatever else Shakespeare was he was not i
Puritan. So strong is Judge Webb's animus agains
" Shakspere " that he seems to regard it as telling
against him that Stratford in the time of " Shak
spere," according to the showing of Mr. [Halli
well-] Phillipps, was a town of " fetid watercourses
piggeries, and middens." Far too much is made o
Greene's petulant utterances, probablv due to mis
conception, while everything that tells in favou
of "Shakspere" is deprived of significance, anc
those who express a favourable opinion concernin ;
him are the subjects of depreciation or attack
Davies of Hereford identifies the player with th
poet, and is therefore dubbed " the Hereforc
Poetaster." William Camden even incurs a sneer
perhaps merited, in consequence of praising th
Stratford writer's "genius and great abilities.
Fuller's utterances concerning the wit combat
between Shakespeare and Jonson are characterize
as " apocalyptic, and the attitude of the Drydens
'ates, and others who arranged Shakespeare's
lays is, unintentionally no doubt, misrepresented,
carcely one of these men is there who in modern -
zing Shakespeare, or "tagging" his lines with
imes, does not express his admiration for his
riginal and assume it to be shared by the public,
t was while perverting 'The Tempest that
Dryden wrote :
But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be ; Within that circle none durst walk but he. We acquit Judge Webb of anything more than n over-anxious desire to establish his case, winch enders him something less than fair. His book is ruitful in suggestion, and may be studied with Measure and in some respects with profit. If we lave not dealt with its main theme it is because we do not wish to embark upon what we seriously egard as a futile controversy, and because we feel hat in getting rid of one set of difficulties we en-
- ounter another set not less formidable. In his
ndeavour to prove "Shakspere" little more than a clown Judge Webb falls into that common error of making inadequate allowance for exceptional natures. It is only in degree that Shakespeare is more of a miracle than Burns or than James Fer- guson.
The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift. Edited by
Temple Scott. Vol. IX. ( Bell & Sons.) THE ninth volume of the convenient and attractive edition of Swift's ' Prose Works ' added to " Bohn's Standard Library" consists of Swift's contribu- tions to the Tatler, the Examiner, the Spectator, and the Intelligencer. These constitute some of the most characteristic, most brilliant, and most readable of Swift's writings. To judge how true this is the reader has only to turn to the account of 'La Platonne' (Tatler, No. 32), with which the volume opens. Mr. Temple Scott rightly disputes the appropriateness of the term " Prince of Journal- ists" applied to Swift, declaring it both misleading and inaccurate. His introduction is indeed excel- lent in all respects. For ourselves, after skimming afresh a portion of the contents, we sigh for an opportunity of rereading them through. The style is admirably pellucid and furnishes a lesson how to write. It is simply the best.
Butterflies and Moths of Europe. By W. F. Kirby,
F.L.S. (Cassell & Co.)
IN a brilliant cover appears the first instalment of a valuable and attractive work. Three plates, two of them superbly coloured, are given, and with them the introduction. If the work is continued as it begins it will be a delight to the naturalist.
WE are most of us very ignorant of all thines which relate to Abyssinia. The fact that the people profess a form of Christianity believed to be of a Monophysite type, and that the nobles regard themselves as descended from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, about exhausts our knowledge; even the war which we carried on there some years ago excited little permanent interest reprdmg either the country or a people which, whatever their faults may have been, have worked out for themselves a civilization of a highly interesting character. The writer of ' The Recent History of Abyssinia,' in the Edinburgh Remew for April, is one of the few who have studied not only the race, but the land itself. As to whether he has travelled therein we are of course ignorant, but at any rat
