Some projects sound too easy to be worthwhile.
This is one of them. We amass evidence by reading the Shakespeare edition and the Life of Milton , and then counting Dictionary quotations from Spenser, Hooker, and Bacon. I confess that when I first embarked on this project, I had visions of doing something almost that mechanical. But some projects that sound too easy to be worthwhile turn out to be far more complicated than they first seem. This is one of them.