The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-10-02

loses his head, and his judgment Is worthless. They believed that Jonson discredfted Shakspere Because Jonson said his lines did not apply to all ac- tors. Clifford jumps at the conclusion that Shakspere is spared and not meant, and would place the discredit upon Dek- ker or some one else. Here's your non sequitur, full grown.
 I have not forgotten Jonson's lines In the Folio of 1923, nor the preface to that volume, signed by Heminge and Condell, at the time stage people, but formerly grocers and printers. I have no Idea that either of them had any thing to do with the preface. It is too much of a classic for them. They signed their names, I doubt not; and that was about all, I believe. They did not pay stiver for the printing. They seemed to be willing to be ''used." and were, 1t seems. At the time Ba = con was In sore straits for money he even yet hoped that he might be re- stored to the house of lords; public declaration of the authorship of the plays would have absolutely barred his way. Jonson was his intimate friend and in his secret. It appears then that his secret and by publishing the plays for the money they might bring. Hence the preface which has Jonsons marks all through it. Bacon had then ceased to write the plays. He was practically dead to the theatrical world. Jonson would have him back, writing as be- fore. But in this very year, 1923, Ba- con wrote in his De Augmentis Scien- tiarum, ''Posey Is, as 1t were dream and fain to be thought partly divine, quality which dreams also sometimes affect But now 1t is time for me to become fully awake, to lift myself up from the earth, and to wing my way through the liquid ether of philosophy and the sciences" This Is a remark able statement. It substantially gives the whole question Its answer. And this renunciation of writing poetry was made in the very year that the plays were gathered up and printed in the great Folio, one of the worlds mon umental volumes Let the reader go over the preface again and he will be Impressed with the mystery enshroud- ing 1t. So with the lines opposite the Droeshout engraving. One cannot help feeling the double meaning in old Ben's lines. There was no man of more brass" than Shakspere. and Jonson knew it; and of the engraver of the picture he says:
 70, could he but have drawn the wit,
 As well in brass as he has hit
 The face, the print would then sur
 pass
 All that was ever writ--in brass" | Does Dr. Richardson still ask: How many final estimates may a man have? still answer: One, and now see how 1t is perpetuated In the mind of Jon son toward his friend Bacon. The doc tor says: "Jonsons opinion of Shaks- pere was that The outshone Aeschylus and Euripides and all that insolent Greece and naughty Rome sent out" The lines are 'Tonson's but that he referred to "Shakspere," the poet ape,' is not SC clear as at first it appears. Jonson held that Bacon was the eliminating glory of his genera ton of letters" and long after Bacon. Shakspere and Jonson were dead. ih '1640. Jonson's "Discoveries" were pub lished in which we read of Francis Bacon, "He hath filled up all num- bers and performed that In our tongue, which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece or naughty Rome" Mark this language. It was applied to Bacon, the "culminating glory, in his generation of letters" Shakspere was at least subordinate to Bacon. Surely one, does not want an- sother ''final' estimate.
 pr Richardson says of Shakspere, He attended the free grammar school at Guild hall, at Stratford, where Jonson says he learned Little Latin and less Greek!" Asking the pardon of the Doc tor, I beg to say that Jonson said no such thing. He never said anything