Professor Dowden took the matter up, with full knowledge, {93a} and
reconverted Mr. Tyrrell, who wrote: "I am not versed in the
literature of the Shakespearian era, and I assumed that the Baconians
who put forward the parallelisms had satisfied themselves that the
coincidences were peculiar to the writings of the philosopher and the
poet. Professor Dowden has proved that this is not so." {93b}

Were I to enter seriously on this point of genius, I should begin by
requesting my adversaries to read Mr. F. W. H. Myers's papers on "The
Mechanism of Genius" (in his Human Personality), and to consider the
humble problem of "Calculating Boys," which is touched on also by
Cardinal Newman. How do they, at the age of innocence, arrive at
their amazing results? How did the child Pascal, ignorant of Euclid,
work out the Euclidean propositions of "bars and rounds," as he
called lines and circles? Science has no solution!

Transport the problem into the region of poetry and knowledge of
human nature, take Will in place of Pascal and Gauss, and (in manners
and matter of war) Jeanne d'Arc;--and science, I fancy, is much to
seek for a reply.

Mr. Greenwood considers, among others, the case of Robert Burns. The
parallel is very interesting, and does not, I think, turn so much to
Mr. Greenwood's advantage as he supposes. The genius of Burns, of
course, is far indeed below the level of that of the author of the
Shakespearean plays. But that author and Burns have this in common
with each other (and obviously with Homer), that their work arises
from a basis of older materials, already manipulated by earlier
artists. Burns almost always has a key-note already touched, as
confessedly in the poems of his predecessor, Fergusson; of Hamilton