" {260a}
Ben was much in the habit of giving "sendoffs" of great eloquence to
poetic "ventures" now forgotten. What could "the efficient cause" be
in the case of the Folio? At once Mr. Greenwood has recourse to
Bacon; he cannot, do what he will, keep Bacon "out of the Memorial."
Ben was with Bacon at Gorhambury, on Bacon's sixtieth birthday
(January 22, 1621). Ben wrote verses about the Genius of the old
house,
"Thou stand'st as if some mystery thou didst."
"What was that 'mystery'?" asks Mr. Greenwood. {260b} What indeed?
And what has all this to do with Ben's commendatory verses for the
Folio, two years later? Mr. Greenwood also surmises, as we have
seen, {260c} that Jonson was with Bacon, helping to translate The
Advancement of Learning in June, 1623.
Let us suppose that he was: what has that to do with Ben's verses
for the Folio? Does Mr. Greenwood mean to hint that BACON was the
"efficient cause operating to induce" Ben "to give the best possible
send-off" to the Folio? One does not see what interest Bacon had in
stimulating the enthusiasm of Ben, unless we accept Bacon as author
of the plays, which Mr. Greenwood does not. If Mr. Greenwood thinks
that Bacon was the author of the plays, then the facts are suitable
to his belief. But if he does not,--"I hold no brief for the
Baconians," he says,--how is all this passage on Ben's visits to
Bacon concerned with the subject in hand?
Between the passage on some "efficient cause" "at the back of Ben's
mind," {261a} and the passage on Ben's visits to Bacon in 1621-3,
{261b} six pages intervene, and blur the supposed connection between
the "efficient cause" of Ben's verses of 1623, and his visits to
Bacon in 1621-3.
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