Now, thank goodness, he had gone, and I could read in peace.
Angels and ministers of grace defend us—Bacon's Essays and Donnelly's Cryptogram!—in the parlour of a shabby old inn! Was mine host, then, of a literary turn? Ay, I had noted his gushing praise of Burns and Walter Scott; and, by the way, what was it he said about Shakespeare's visit to Edinburgh? He had shown me a letter in a book: I had been too intensely bored by his trowelled praise of Scottish lochs, Scottish mountains, haggis, parritch, usquebaugh, and Scottish poetry, to pay much heed—but yes, this must be it. Drummond's Sonnets, and here evidently was the letter, signed by Ben Jonson, indorsed "to my very good friend, the lairde of Hawthornden":—
Master vill,
quhen we were drinking at my Lordis on Sonday, you promised yat you would gett for me my Lordis coppie he lent you of my Lord Sempill his interlude callit philotas, and qhuich vill Shakespeare told me he actit in edinburt, quhen he wes yair wit the players, to his gret contentment and delighte. My man waits your answer:
So give him the play,
And lette him awaye
To your assured friend
and loving servand,Ben Jonson.
From my lodging in the canongait,
Mrch the twelft, 1619.
So here also had Shakespeare anticipated me? Had he been to Edinburgh too?
I might have known: but lo! I grow so used to our resemblances, I almost cease to notice them.
Donnelly too! I had never seen his book before—though I have taken keen interest in the subject ever since Delia Bacon arose in—well, the land where they do raise Bacon—and found Shakespeare out.
Could it indeed be true that Shakespeare was an ignorant impostor, whose business it was to hold respectable gentlemen's horses at the stage-door of the theatre, instead of which he wickedly suborned the Lord High Chancellor of England to write his plays for him, and the same with intent to deceive?
To make sure, I read a few pages of Donnelly.
Even that failed to convince me: the more I read, the more I didn't know.
I saw Shakespeare's Works on the bookshelf, and reached the volume down. It opened at the Sonnets.