acceptance.' This could never have been written had the dedication
of 'Venus and Adonis' been disdained. 'The client never
acknowledged his obligation to the patron,' says Judge Webb. The
dedication of 'Lucrece' is acknowledgment enough. The Judge ought
to think so, for he speaks, with needless vigour, of 'the
protestations, warm and gushing as a geyser, of "The Rape."' There
is nothing 'warm,' and nothing 'gushing,' in the dedication of
'Lucrece' (granting the style of the age), but, if it were as the
Judge says, here, indeed, would be the client's 'acknowledgment,'
which, the Judge says, was never made.* To argue against such logic
seems needless, and even cruel, but judicial contentions appear to
deserve a reply.

Webb, p. 67.

We now come to the evidence of the Rev. Francis Meres, in 'Palladis
Tamia' (1598). Meres makes 'Shakespeare among the English' the
rival, in comedy and tragedy, of Plautus and Seneca 'among the
Latines.' He names twelve plays, of which 'Love's Labour's Won' is
unknown. 'The soul of Ovid' lives in his 'Venus and Adonis,' his
'Lucrece,' and his 'sugred sonnets among his private friends.'
Meres also mentions Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, and so forth,
a long string of English poetic names, ending with 'Samuel Page,
sometime Fellow of C.C.C. in Oxford, Churchyard, Bretton.'*

*Phillipps, ii. pp. 149,150.

Undeniably Meres, in 1598, recognises Shakespeare as both playwright
and poet. So Judge Webb can only reply: 'But who this mellifluous
and honey-tongued Shakespeare was he does not say, AND HE DOES NOT