Most of the passages are from plays (_Titus Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_, i., ii., iii.), which Mr. Greenwood denies (usually) to _his_ author, the Great Unknown. Throughout these early plays Mr. Collins takes Shakespeare’s to resemble Seneca’s _Latin_ style: Shakespeare, then, took up Greek tragedy in later life; after the early period when he dealt with Seneca. Here is a sample of borrowing from Horace, “_Persicos odi puer apparatus_” (_Odes_. I, xxxviii. I). Mr. Collins quotes _Lear_ (III, vi. 85) thus, “You will say they are _Persian attire_.” Really, Lear in his wild way says to Edgar, “I do not like the fashion of your garments: you will say they are Persian; but let them be changed.” Mr. Collins changes this into “you will say they are _Persian attire_,” a phrase “which could only have occurred to a classical scholar.” The phrase is not in Shakespeare, and Lear’s wandering mind might as easily select “Persian” as any other absurdity. So it is throughout. Two great poets write on the fear of death, on the cries of new-born children, on dissolution and recombination in nature, on old age; they have ideas in common, obvious ideas, glorified by poetry,—and Shakespeare, we are told, is borrowing from Lucretius or Juvenal; while the critic leaves his reader to find out and study the Latin passages which he does not quote. So arbitrary is taste in these matters that Mr. Collins, like Mr. Grant White, but independently, finds Shakespeare putting a thought from the _Alcibiades I_ of Plato into the mouth of Achilles in _Troilus and Cressida_, while Mr. J. M. Robertson suggests that the borrowing is from Seneca—where Mr. Collins does not find “the smallest parallel.” Mr. Collins is certainly right; the author of _Troilus_ makes Ulysses quote Plato as “the author” of a remark, and makes Achilles take up the quotation, which Ulysses goes on to criticise. Thus, in this play, not only Aristotle (as Hector says) but Plato are taken to have lived before the Trojan war, and to have been read by the Achæans! There were Latin translations of Plato; the _Alcibiades I_ was published apart, from Ficinus’ version, in 1560, with the sub-title, _Concerning the Nature of Man_. Who had read it?—Shakespeare, or one of the two authors (Dekker and Chettle) of another _Troilus and Cressida_ (now lost), or Bacon, or Mr. Greenwood’s Unknown? Which of these Platonists chose to say that Plato and Aristotle lived long before Homer? Which of them followed the Ionic and mediæval anti-Achæan view of Homer’s heroes, as given in the Troy Books of the Middle Ages, and yet knew Iliad, Book VII, and admired Odysseus, whom the Ionian tradition abhors? _Troilus and Cressida_ is indeed a mystery, but Somebody concerned in it had read Ficinus’ version of the _Alcibiades_; {75a} and yet made the monstrous anachronism of dating Aristotle and Plato before the Trojan war. “That was his fun,” as Charles Lamb said in another connection.