If the paragraph from the "Discoveries" last above quoted--which estimates William Shakespeare precisely as history estimates him, namely, as a clever fellow, and a player in one of the earliest theaters in London--is not to be regarded as a confession that Ben Jonson's verses were written (or rewritten) more out of generosity to his late friend's memory--rather in the exuberance of a poetic license of apotheosis--than with a literal adherence to truth;* then it must be conceded that the result is such a facing both ways as {143}hangs any Jonsonian testimony in perfect equilibrium as to the Shakespearean controversy, and entitles Ben Jonson himself, as a witness for anybody or to any thing, to simply step down and out. * A confession, say the Baconians, that Jonson, as long as Bacon lived, was eager to serve him by shouldering on his incognito--in poetry--while he was under no compunction to do so in his own posthumous remains. See post V, The Baconian Theory. For, admitting that his poetry is just as good as his prose--and probably the Shakespeareans would care to assert no more than that--it is a legal maxim that a witness who swears for both sides swears for neither; and a rule of common law no less than of common sense that his evidence must be ruled out, since no jury can be called upon to believe and disbelieve one and the same witness at the same time. And so we are relieved from accounting for the "Jonson testimony," as did Lord Palmerston, by saying: "O, those fellows always hang together; or, its just possible Jonson may have been deceived like the rest;" * or by asking ourselves if a score of rhymes by Ben Johnson, a fellow craftsman (not sworn to, of course, and not nearly as tropical or ecstatic as they might have been, and yet been quite justifiable under the rule nil nisi)--are to outweigh all historic certainty? If Jonson had written a life, or memoir, or "recollections," or "table-talk," of William Shakespeare, it might have been different. But he only gives us a few cheap lines of poetical eulogy; and fact is one thing, and poetry--unless there is an exception in this instance--is conceded to be altogether another. * Frazer's Magazine, November, 1865, p. 666.