the tip of his tongue--by someone who had travelled far and read
deeply; and, above all, by a man who had spent at least a year in a
conveyancer's chambers! And yet, when this has been said, would Lord
Penzance have added that the style and character of the playwright is
the style and character of a really learned man of his period! Can
anything less like such a style be imagined? Once genius is granted,
heaven-born genius, a mother-wit beyond the dreams of fancy, and then
plain humdrum men, ordinary judicial intelligences, will do well to be
on their guard against it. 'Beware--beware! he is fooling thee.'
Shakespeare's genius has simply befooled Lord Penzance. Seafaring men,
after reading _The Tempest_, are ready to maintain that its author
must have been for at least a year before the mast. As for
Shakespeare's law, which has taken in so many matter-of-fact
practitioners, one can now refer to Ben Jonson's evidence in _Hall v.
Russell_, where that great dramatist has no difficulty in showing that
if none but a lawyer could have written Shakespeare's plays, a lawyer
alone could have preached Thomas Adams's sermons. Judge Willis's
profound knowledge of sound old divinity has served him here in good
stead. The fact is it is simply impossible to exaggerate the
quick-wittedness and light-heartedness of a great literary genius. The
absorbing power, the lightning-like faculty of apprehension, the
instant recognition of the uses to which any fact or fancy can be put,
the infinite number and delicacy of the mental feelers, thrust out in
all directions, which belong to the creative brain and keep it in
tremulous and restless activity, are quite enough so to differentiate
the possessor of these endowments from his fellow mortals as to make
comparison impossible. Shakespeare the actor was by the common consent
of his enemies one of the deftest fellows that ever made use of other
men's materials--'Convey, the wise it call.' I will again quote
Spedding: