Page:A budget of paradoxes (IA cu31924103990507).pdf/24

10 [There are many who have such a deep respect for any attempt at thought that they are shocked at ridicule even of those who have made themselves conspicuous by pretending to lead the world in matters which they have not studied. Among my anonymes is a gentleman who is angry at my treatment of the 'poor but thoughtful' man who is described in my introduction as recommending me to go to a Sunday-school because I informed him that he did not know in what the difficulty of quadrature consisted. My impugner quite forgets that this man's 'thoughtfulness' chiefly consisted in his demanding a hundred thousand pounds from the Lord Chancellor for his discovery; and I may add, that his greatest stretch of invention was finding out that "the clergy" were the means of his modest request being unnoticed. I mention this letter because it affords occasion to note a very common error, namely, that men unread in their subjects have, by natural wisdom, been great benefactors of mankind. My critic says, 'Shakspeare, whom the Pro$r$ (sic) may admit to be a wisish man, though an object of contempt as to learning….' Shakspeare an object of contempt as to learning! Though not myself a thoroughgoing Shakespearean—and adopting the first half of the opinion given by George III, 'What! is there not sad stuff? only one must not say so'—I am strongly of opinion that he throws out the masonic signs of learning in almost every scene, to all who know what they are. And this over and above every kind of direct evidence. First, foremost, and enough, the evidence of Ben Jonson that he had 'little Latin and less Greek'; then Shakespeare had as much Greek as Jonson would call some, even when he was depreciating. To have any Greek at all was in those days exceptional. In Shakespeare's youth St. Paul's and Merchant Taylor's schools were to have masters learned in good and clean Latin literature, and also in Greek if such may be gotten. When Jonson spoke as above, he intended to put Shakespeare low among the learned, but not out of their pale; and he spoke as a rival dramatist, who was proud of his own learned sock; and it may be a subject of inquiry how much Latin he would call little. If Shakespeare's learning on certain points be very much less visible than Jonson's, it is partly because Shakespeare's writings hold it in chemical combination, Jonson's in mechanical aggregation.]

7. An elderly man came to me to show me how the universe was created. There was one molecule, which by vibration became—Heaven knows how!—the Sun. Further vibration produced Mercury, and so on. I suspect the nebular hypothesis had got