absurdly accused of being the "nom de plume" of some great "concealed
poets" of Rome. "From all the known facts about Terence," says a
Baconian critic (who has consulted Smith's Biographical Dictionary),
"it is an almost unavoidable inference that John Davies made the
comparison to Shakspere because he knew of the point common to both
cases." The common point is taken to be, not that both men were
famous comic dramatists, but that Roman literary gossips said, and
that Baconians and Mr. Greenwood say, that "Terence" was said to be a
"mask-name," and that "Shakespeare" is a mask-name. Of the second
opinion there is not a hint in literature of the time of good Will.

What surprises one most in this controversy is that men eminent in
the legal profession should be "anti-Shakesperean," if not overtly
Baconian. For the evidence for the contemporary faith in Will's
authorship is all positive; from his own age comes not a whisper of
doubt, not even a murmur of surprise. It is incredible to me that
his fellow-actors and fellow-playwrights should have been deceived,
especially when they were such men as Ben Jonson and Tom Heywood.
One would expect lawyers, of all people, to have been most impatient
of the surprising attempts made to explain away Ben Jonson's
testimony, by aid, first, of quite a false analogy (Scott's denial of
his own authorship of his novels), and, secondly, by the suppression
of such a familiar fact as the constant inconsistency of Ben's
judgments of his contemporaries in literature. Mr. Greenwood must
have forgotten the many examples of this inconsistency; but I have
met a Baconian author who knew nothing of the fact. Mr. Greenwood,
it is proper to say, does not seem to be satisfied that he has solved
what he calls "the Jonsonian riddle." Really, there is no riddle.
About Will, as about other authors, his contemporaries and even his
friends, on occasion, Ben "spoke with two voices," now in terms of