99
the convention. The tradition followed by Milton, who was eight years of age when Shakespeare died, and who wrote L'Allegro just after leaving Cambridge, makes Shakespeare "sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child," with "native wood-notes wild"; and gives to Jonson "the LEARNED sock." Fuller, like Milton, was born eight years before the death of Shakespeare, namely, in 1608. Like Milton he was a Cambridge man. The First Folio of Shakespeare's works appeared when each of these two bookish men was aged fifteen. It would necessarily revive interest in Shakespeare, now first known as far as about half of his plays went: he would be discussed among lovers of literature at Cambridge. Mr. Greenwood quotes Fuller's remark that Shakespeare's "learning was very little," that, if alive, he would confess himself "to be never any scholar." {151a} I cannot grant that Fuller is dividing the persons of actor and author. Men of Shakespeare's generation, such as Jonson, did not think him learned; nor did men of the next generation. If Mr. Collins's view be correct, the men of Shakespeare's and of Milton's generations were too ignorant to perceive that Shakespeare was deeply learned in the literature of Rome, and in the literature of Greece. Every one was too ignorant, till Mr. Collins came.
CHAPTER VIII
: "THE SILENCE OF PHILIP HENSLOWE"
When Shakespeare is mentioned as an author by contemporary writers, the Baconian stratagem, we have seen, is to cry, "Ah, but you cannot prove the author mentioned to be the actor." We have seen that Meres (1598) speaks of Shakespeare as the leading tragic and comic poet ("Poor poet-ape that would be thought our chief," quoth Jonson), as author of Venus and Adonis, and as a sonneteer. "All this does nothing whatever to support the idea that the Stratford player was the author of the plays and poems alluded to," says Mr. Greenwood, playing that card again. {155a}
The allusions, I repeat, DO prove that Shak(&c.), the ac