But since numberless good people are suspicious of rules of law as applied to evidence, regarding them as over-nice, finical, and as framed rather to keep out truth than to let it in, let-us waive the legal maxim, {144}and admit the Jonsonian testimony to be one single, consistent block of contemporary evidence. But, no sooner do we do this, than we find ourselves straightway floundering in a slough of absurdities for greater, it seems to us, than any we have yet encountered. To illustrate: It is necessary to the Shakespearean theory that in the days of Elizabeth and James there should have been not only a _man_, but a genius, a wit, and a poet, of the name of William Shakespeare; and that all these--man, genius, wit, and poet--should have been one and the same individual. Taking all the Jonsonian testimony, prose and poetry, together, such an individual there was, and his name was William Shakespeare, as required. But--still following Jonson's authority--at the same period and in the same town of London there was a certain gentleman named Bacon, who was "learned and able," and who had, moreover, "filled up all numbers--and" in the same days "performed that which may be compared either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome." We have, then, not only a "wit and poet" named Shakespeare, but a "wit and poet" named Bacon; and, since Jonson is nowhere too modest to admit that he himself was a "wit and poet," we have, therefore, actually not one but three of a kind, at each other's elbows in London, in the golden age of English literature. We have already seen that, of this trio, two--Bacon and Shakespeare, if we are to believe the Shakespeareans--were personally unknown to each other. It is worth our while to pause right here, and see what this statement involves. They are all three--Bacon, Jonson, and Shakespeare--dwelling in the same town at the same mo{145}ment; are, all three, writers and wits, earning their living by their pens. Ben Jonson is the mutual friend. He is of service to both--he translates Bacon's English into Latin for him, * and writes plays for William Shakespeare's stage, and, as we have seen, he ultimately becomes the Boswell of both, and runs from one to the other in rapture. * Jonson assisted Dr. Hackett, afterward Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry, in translating the essays of Lord Bacon into Latin. (Whalley, "Life of Ben Jonson," Vol. I. of works, cited ante.) Jonson was at this time "on terms of intimacy with Lord Bacon."--(W. H. Smith, "Bacon and Shakespeare," p. 29.)