Of course by "moral qualities," a character without spot or stain is
not intended: we may take that for granted. Otherwise, I agree; and
think that Shakespeare of Stratford had genius, and that what it
produced was in accordance with the opportunities open to it, and
with "the circumstances of its environment." Without the
"environment," no Jeanne d'Arc,--without the environment, no
Shakespeare.

To come to his own, Shakespeare needed the environment of "the light
people," the crowd of wits living from hand to mouth by literature,
like Greene and Nash; and he needed that pell-mell of the productions
of their pens: the novels, the poems, the pamphlets, and, above all,
the plays, and the wine, the wild talk, the wit, the travellers'
tales, the seamen's company, the vision of the Court, the gallants,
the beauties; and he needed the People, of whom he does not speak in
the terms of such a philanthropist as Bacon professedly was. Not as
an aristocrat, a courtier, but as a simple literary man, William does
not like, though he thoroughly understands, the mob. Like Alceste
(in Le Misanthrope of Poquelin), he might say,


"L'Ami du genre humain n'est point du tout mon fait."


In London, not in Stratford, he could and did find his mob. This
reminds one to ask, how did the Court-haunting, or the study-
haunting, or law-court, and chamber of criminal examination-rooms
haunting Bacon make acquaintance with Mrs. Quickly, and Doll
Tearsheet, and drawers, and carters, and Bardolph, and Pistol, and