When the Shakespeare revival came, some eighty or ninety years ago,
people said "pretty well for Shakespeare" and the "learned" men of that
period were rather ashamed that Shakespeare should be deemed to be
"_the_" English poet.
"Three poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy and England did adorn,
. . . . . . . . . .
The force of Nature could no further go,
To make a third she joined the other two."
Dryden did not write these lines in reference to Shakespeare but to
Milton. Where will you find the person who to-day thinks Milton comes
within any measurable distance of the greatest genius among the sons of
earth who was called by the name of Shakespeare?
Ninety-two years ago, viz.: in June 1818, an article appeared in
_Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, under the heading "Time's Magic
Lantern. No. V. Dialogue between Lord Bacon and Shakspeare" [Shakespeare
being spelled Shakspeare]. The dialogue speaks of "Lord" Bacon and
refers to him as being engaged in transcribing the "Novum Organum" when
Shakspeare enters with a letter from Her Majesty (meaning Queen
Elizabeth) asking him, Shakspeare, to see "her own" sonnets now in the
keeping of _her_ Lord Chancellor.
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