Is this supposed collaboration with Bacon in 1623, “the efficient cause operating to induce” Ben “to give the best possible send-off” to the Folio? How could this be the “efficient cause” if Bacon were not the author of the plays? Mr. Greenwood, like the Genius at the birthday supper, “Stands as if some mystery he did.” On a trifling point of honour, namely, as to whether Ben were a man likely to lie, tortuously, hypocritically, to be elaborately false about the authorship of the Shakespearean plays, it is hopelessly impossible to bring the Baconians and Mr. Greenwood (who “holds no brief for the Baconians”) to my point of view. Mr. Greenwood rides off thus—what the Baconians do is unimportant. “There are, as everybody knows, many falsehoods that are justifiable, some that it is actually a duty to tell.” It may be so; I pray that I may never tell any of them (or any more of them). Among justifiable lies I do not reckon that of Scott if ever he plumply denied that he wrote the _Waverley_ novels. I do not judge Sir Walter. Heaven forbid! But if, in Mr. Greenwood’s words, he, “we are told, thought it perfectly justifiable for a writer who wished to preserve his anonymity, to deny, when questioned, the authorship of a work, since the interrogator had no right to put such a question to him,” {267a} I disagree with Sir Walter. Many other measures, in accordance with the conditions of each case, were open to him. Some are formulated by his own Bucklaw, in _The Bride of Lammermoor_, as regards questions about what occurred on his bridal night. Bucklaw would challenge the man, and cut the lady, who asked questions. But Scott’s case, as cited, applies only to Bacon (or Mr. Greenwood’s Unknown), if _he_ were asked whether or not he were the author of the plays. No idiot, at that date, was likely to put the question! But, if anyone did ask, Bacon must either evade, or deny, or tell the truth.