Can anybody positively deny that Shakspeare stole away from the Mermaid more often then his fellow-actors and poets relished, to spend the evening with Essex at Gray's Inn, perhaps while Bacon was busy upon his "Characters of Julius and Augustus Cæsar" in 1607-8,--for not long after that the famous tragedy appeared; perhaps to urge him with the happy suggestions of friendship to write his Defence of Shakspeare's own dear Essex? There was, indeed, that "semblable coherence" between the spirits of the philosopher and the poet which qualified them to be mutual instructors; and the mobile and apprehensive intellect of the poet could absorb without books the thoughts that filled the air round Bacon's head. The structure of Shakspeare, open at every pore to every influence, was pervaded with the conversations of his age: the interchange made a thoroughfare of him; and, as it passed, he detained all the nutriment that his imagination craved, and let the rest escape. He lived amid this impromptu wit and knowledge of illustrious friends, saturated with their atmosphere, passing it through the deep-breathing lungs to redden, and transmitting it by magnificent pulses to the hearts of his spectators, purged of superfluity, sweetened by gentleness, drenched in grace. By every sense, with the nerves of every touch, he appropriated character, love, theory, and life. London was library and university; and poetic intuition was the tutor of his soul. So--whether jesting at the Mermaid, and growing forgetive upon the sack; visiting the haunts of travellers and mariners to pick up strange tales; listening to the multifarious comment of a Bacon, and turning over his rarities of books; or lounging by the river-side with Southampton, the centre of a group of the most advanced, curious, brilliant men of the Elizabethan age--he became, in person, the coincidence which pervades the dramas; and all inquisitions upon the amount of literary culture which he achieved, or surmises about his earlier employments, become impertinent, if they are not made ridiculous, as his great, receptive, broad-domed soul covered over London's world and drew up its variety. There is a kindred gift in Robert Browning, which makes its confession thus:-- "If we have souls, know how to see and use, One place performs, like any other place, The proper service every place on earth Was framed to furnish man with; serves alike To give him note that, through the place he sees, A place is signified he never saw, But, if he lack not soul, may learn to know."