He lives, he lives though sorely spent; We shrug our shoulders, and lament The tyranny not overpast Of Philistine and agelast. [Illustration: SHACON AND BAKESPEARE HOMER: "Look here, what _does_ it matter which of you chaps wrote the other fellow's books? Goodness only knows _how_ many wrote mine!" (_Nods, as usual, and exit._) ] [Sidenote: _Shakespeare and Shaw_] The last word has an academic ring, but _Punch_ was probably thinking of George Meredith's use of it in a letter to _The Times_ in 1877 when he spoke of those "whom Rabelais would have called agelasts or non-laughers." A brilliant American essayist, Miss Agnes Repplier, has recently remarked that the Twentieth Century does not "lean to extravagant partialities" but rather to "disparagement, to searchlights, to that lavish candour which no man's reputation can sustain." In the pastime of hauling eminence down from its pinnacle she awards a pre-eminence to British critics. It cannot be said that _Punch_ has taken an active hand in this game. Even Shakespeare had not been exempt from this "lavish candour." Mr. Bernard Shaw, writing in the _Saturday Review_ in 1896, had said that "with the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare, when I measure my mind against his." Whether he really meant what he said is a question passing the wit of the plain person; but the utterance stung _Punch_ into a rejoinder in the form of an imaginary interview with "G. B. S.," in which the criticism is further developed and obliquely ridiculed. _Punch_ was equally sensitive where patronage of the bard suggested self-advertisement, and in 1901, in the "New Genius of Stratford-on-Avon," he expressed an ironical apprehension lest Miss Corelli might oust Shakespeare as the tutelary deity of that town. The Bacon-Shakespeare controversy was again becoming acute and claimed _Punch's_ attention in 1902, when he published a cartoon bearing on the issue, and followed it up with a happy burlesque. As he argued, "If Bacon wrote Shakespeare's Plays, why, in the name of all that is biliteral, should not Shakespeare have written Bacon's Essays?" Hence the dissertation "Of Plays and their Authors," from which I may quote the concluding passages:--