For on this point of Will’s use of legal phraseology I frankly profess myself entirely at a loss. To use it in poetry was part of the worse side of taste at that period. The lawyers with one voice declare that Will’s use of it is copious and correct, and that their “mystery” is difficult, their jargon hard to master; “there is nothing so dangerous,” wrote Lord Campbell, “as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry.” I have not tampered with it. Perhaps a man of genius who found it interesting might have learned the technical terms more readily than lawyers deem possible. But Will, so accurate in his legal terms, is so inaccurate on many other points; for example, in civil and natural history, and in classic lore. Mr. Greenwood proves him to be totally at sea as a naturalist. On the habits of bees, for example, “his natural history of the insect is as limited as it is inaccurate.” {284a} Virgil, though not a Lord Avebury, was a great entomologist, compared with Will. About the cuckoo Will was recklessly misinformed. His Natural History was folklore, or was taken from that great mediæval storehouse of absurdities, the popular work of Pliny. “He went to contemporary error or antiquated fancy for his facts, not to nature,” says a critic quoted by Mr. Greenwood. {284b} Was that worthy of Bacon? All these charges against _le vieux Williams_ (as Théophile Gautier calls our Will) I admit. But Will was no Bacon; Will had not “taken all knowledge for his province.” Bacon, I hope, had not neglected Bees! Thus the problem, why is Will accurate in his legal terminology, and reckless of accuracy in quantity, in history, in classic matters, is not by me to be solved. I can only surmise that from curiosity, or for some other unknown reason, he had read law-books, or drawn information from Templars about the meaning of their jargon, and that, for once, he was technically accurate. * * * * * We have now passed in review the chief Baconian and Anti-Willian arguments against Will Shakespeare’s authorship of the plays and poems. Their chief argument for Bacon is _aut Diabolus_, _aut Franciscus_, which, freely interpreted, means, “If Bacon is not the author, who the devil is?”