"
_I_ do not want to "explain" Ben's words "away": I want to know how
on earth Mr. Greenwood explains them away. My view is that Ben meant
what he said, that Will, whose shade he is addressing, was no scholar
(which he assuredly was not). I diligently search Mr. Greenwood's
scriptures, asking How does he explain Ben's "memorable words" away?
On p. 106 of The Shakespeare Problem Restated I seem to catch a
glimmer of his method. "Once let the Stratfordians" (every human and
non-Baconian person of education) "admit that Jonson when he penned
the words 'small Latin and less Greek' was really writing 'with his
tongue in his cheek.' . . . "
Once admit that vulgarism concerning a great English poet engaged on
a poem of Pindaric flight, and of prophetic vision! No, we leave the
admission to Mr. Greenwood and his allies.
To consider thus is to consider too seriously. The Baconians and
Anti-Willians have ceased to deserve serious attention (if ever they
did deserve it), and virtuous indignation, and all that kind of
thing, when they ask people who care for poetry to "admit" that Ben
wrote his verses "with his tongue in his cheek." Elsewhere, {253a}
in place of Ben's "tongue in his cheek," Mr. Greenwood prefers to
suggest that Ben "is here indulging in a little Socratic irony."
Socrates "with his tongue in his cheek"! Say "talking through his
throat," if one may accept the evidence of the author of Raffles, as
to the idioms of burglars.
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