“Is that so?” said the stranger. “Genius insolvent? ‘_Ingenium res adversæ nudare solent, celare secundæ._’ Your poverty should be your gain, sir.” “As with the Horace you quote?” answered the playwright. “I ask for nothing better, sir, nor for a more enlightened Mæcenas than her Majesty’s Counsel-Extraordinary.” Mr. Francis Bacon--for it was he, indeed--laughed, knowing himself detected, as if pleased. “I am well answered,” he said. He was already, young as he was, in advance of his amazing promise--a Bencher and Reader of his Inn, a Member of Parliament, my Lord of Essex’s loved client. And his vast imagination had been the first to grasp the full significance of the dramatic revolution inaugurated by this scapegrace genius who sat revealed before him. “And by a scholar,” he added. “An exhibitioner, an it please your worship,” cried the other. “Bachelor and Master of Arts of Benet’s College of your own University; translator of Helen’s Rape from Coluthus, and, since, a humble reformer of the Miracles, and, as some aver, even a worker of new ones.” “I have been eye and ear-witness of your _Tambourlaine_,” said the stranger; “of your _Faustus_, of your _Jew_; lastly of your _Edward the King_; and I have no desire to traverse the statement. You have done things; you have revealed; you have opened out worlds which others, perchance, shall colonise. I doff my hat to that fine madness of your Muse--the hot passion that tears the ‘unities’ to rags and leaves her clothed in Nature. Withal, Master Marlowe, I have a bone or two to pick with you.” “Alack!” cried the playwright: “this arid mirthless feast!” “Anon, anon, my gentleman! Grace before meat.” “But sack before all. Have you never mastered, learned sir, the five most excellent reasons for drinking?” “I know them not.” “Why, a friend’s visit, the thirst that is, the thirst that will be, the flavour of the wine, and any other reason.” “They are reasons for. There is one more potent against.” “What’s that?” “Why reason itself, which, being robbed by wine, hath no reason to applaud it.” He saw, indeed, that the man was irretrievably drunk, and that he was wasting time on him. He prepared to go on his way--which was to Greenwich, where the Court was being held. “Not robbed, but transmuted,” cried Marlowe. “O liquid alchemy! So to be traduced! Have I not ought to thee all the golden treasures of my brain? And he prefers a bone! Well, sir, pick it, pick it.”