His admiration for Bacon, on the one hand (according to his prose), amounts to a passion; his admiration for Shakespeare, on the other hand (according to his poetry), amounts to a passion, he declares (in prose) that Bacon "hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue, which may be compared and preferred either to _insolent Greece or haughty Rome_." He declares (in poetry) of Shakespeare that he may be left alone--= ````"....for comparison ```Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Borne ```Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come."= And yet he never, while going from one to the other, mentions Shakespeare to Bacon or Bacon to Shakespeare; never "introduces" them or brings them together; never gives his soul's idol Bacon any "order" to his soul's idol Shakespeare's theater, that this absolutely inimitable Bacon (who has surpassed insolent Greece and haughty Rome) may witness the masterpieces of this absolutely inimitable Shakespeare{146}(who has likewise surpassed insolent Greece and haughty Rome); this Boswell of a Jonson, go-between of two men of repute and public character, travels from one to the other, sings the praises of each to the world outside (using the same figures of speech for each), and, in the presence of each, preserves so impenetrable a silence as to the other, that of the two public characters themselves each is absolutely ignorant of the other's existence! And yet they ought to have been close friends, for they borrowed each other's verses, and loaned each other paragraphs to any extent. Persons there have been who asserted, as we shall see, on merely the internal evidence of their writings, that Bacon and "Shakespeare" were one and the same man, and that what appeared to be "parallelisms" and coincidences in Bacon and "Shakespeare" were thus to be accounted for. But, admitting their separate identity, it is certain either that the natural philosopher borrowed his exact facts from the comedies of the playwright, or that the playwright borrowed the speeches for his comedies from the natural philosopher; either of which looks very much like, at least, a speaking acquaintance. For, as we shall see further on, * some of these "parallelisms" are not coincidences, but something very like _identities_. * Post, part V, The Baconian Theory.