Dryden did not write these lines in reference to Shakespeare but to Milton. Where will you find the person who to-day thinks Milton comes within any measurable distance of the greatest genius among the sons of earth who was called by the name of Shakespeare? Ninety-two years ago, viz.: in June 1818, an article appeared in _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, under the heading "Time's Magic Lantern. No. V. Dialogue between Lord Bacon and Shakspeare" [Shakespeare being spelled Shakspeare]. The dialogue speaks of "Lord" Bacon and refers to him as being engaged in transcribing the "Novum Organum" when Shakspeare enters with a letter from Her Majesty (meaning Queen Elizabeth) asking him, Shakspeare, to see "her own" sonnets now in the keeping of _her_ Lord Chancellor. Of course this is all topsy turvydom, for in Queen Elizabeth's reign Bacon was never "Lord" Bacon or Lord Chancellor. But to continue, Shakspeare tells Bacon "Near to Castalia there bubbles also a fountain of petrifying water, wherein the muses are wont to dip whatever posies have met the approval of Apollo; so that the slender foliage which originally sprung forth in the cherishing brain of a true poet becomes hardened in all its leaves and glitters as if it were carved out of rubies and emeralds. The elements have afterwards no power over it." _Bacon_. Such will be the fortune of your own productions. _Shakspeare_. Ah my Lord! Do not encourage me to hope so. I am but a poor unlettered man, who seizes whatever rude conceits his own natural vein supplies him with, upon the enforcement of haste and necessity; and therefore I fear that such as are of deeper studies than myself, will find many flaws in my handiwork to laugh at both now and hereafter. _Bacon_. He that can make the multitude laugh and weep as you do Mr. Shakspeare need not fear scholars.... More scholarship might have sharpened your judgment but the particulars whereof a character is composed are better assembled by force of imagination than of judgment.... _Shakspeare_. My Lord thus far I know, that the first glimpse and conception of a character in my mind, is always engendered by chance and accident. We shall suppose, for instance, that I, sitting in a tap-room, or standing in a tennis court. The behaviour of some one fixes my attention.... Thus comes forth Shallow, and Slender, and Mercutio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. _Bacon_. These are characters who may be found alive in the streets. But how frame you such interlocutors as Brutus and Coriolanus?