Giulio Romano "for his personal diversion," never heard of Ottocar
(no more than I), and made a delightful congeries of errors in gaiety
of heart. Nobody shall convince me that Francis Bacon was so
charmingly irresponsible; but I cannot speak so confidently of Mr.
Greenwood's Great Unknown, a severe scholar, but perhaps a frisky
soul. There was no region called Bohemia when the Delphic oracle was
in vigour;--this apology (apparently contrived by Sir Edward
Sullivan) is the most comic of erudite reflections.

Some cruel critic has censured the lovely speech of Perdita,
concerning the flowers which Proserpine let fall, when she was
carried off by Dis. How could she, brought up in the hut of a
Bohemian shepherd, know anything of the Rape of Proserpine? Why not,
as she lived in the days of the Delphic Oracle--and Giulio Romano,
and of printed ballads.

It is impossible, Baconians cry, that the rabbit-stealer, brought up
among the Audreys and Jaquenettas of Warwickshire, should have
created the noble and witty ladies of the Court; and known the style
of his Armado; and understood how dukes and kings talk among
themselves--usually in blank verse, it appears.

It is impossible that the home-keeping yokel should have heard of the
"obscure" (sic!) Court of Navarre; and known that at Venice there was
a place called the Rialto, and a "common ferry" called "the tranect."
It is impossible that he should have had "an intimate knowledge of
the castle of Elsinore," though an English troupe of actors visited
Denmark in 1587. To Will all this knowledge was impossible; for
these and many more exquisite reasons the yokel's authorship of the
plays is a physical impossibility. But scholars neither invent nor