These intercalary pages are concerned with Ben's
laudations of Bacon, by name, in his Discoveries. The first is
entirely confined to praise of Bacon as an orator. Bacon is next
mentioned in a Catalogue of Writers as "HE WHO HATH FILLED UP ALL
NUMBERS, and performed that in our tongue which may be preferred or
compared either to INSOLENT GREECE OR HAUGHTY ROME," words used of
Shakespeare by Jonson in the Folio verses.
Mr. Greenwood remarks that Jonson's Catalogue, to judge by the names
he cites (More, Chaloner, Smith, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sidney, Hooker,
Essex, Raleigh, Savile, Sandys, and so on), suggests that "he is
thinking mainly of wits and orators of his own and the preceding
generation," not of poets specially. This is obvious; why should Ben
name Shakespeare with More, Smith, Chaloner, Eliot, Bishop Gardiner,
Egerton, Sandys, and Savile? Yet "it is remarkable that no mention
should be made of the great dramatist." Where is Spenser named, or
Beaumont, or Chaucer, with whom Ben ranked Shakespeare? Ben quoted
of Bacon the line he wrote long before of Shakespeare as a poet,
about "insolent Greece," and all this is "remarkable," and Mr.
Greenwood finds it "not surprising" {262a} that the Baconians dwell
on the "extraordinary coincidence of expression," as if Ben were
incapable of repeating a happy phrase from himself, and as if we
should wonder at anything the Baconians may say or do.
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