The first true gentleman that ever breathed,
at the close of Part I of The Honest Whore; and the phrase, “Heaven’s great arithmetician,” at the close of Old Fortunatus. [↑]
[70] Green, Short Hist. ch. vii, § 7 end. Cp. Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, Lect. iii, § 115. [↑]
[71] The old work of W. J. Birch, M.A., An Inquiry into the Philosophy and Religion of Shakspere (1848), is an unjudicial ex parte statement of the case for Shakespeare’s unbelief; but it is worth study. [↑]
[72] The town paid for his bread and wine, no doubt by way of compliment. [↑]
[73] Cp. the author’s Montaigne and Shakespeare, 2nd ed. sec. viii. [↑]
[74] A Woorke concerning the trewnesse of the Christian Religion, 1587. Reprinted in 1592, 1604, and 1617. [↑]
[75] As to the expert analysis of this play, which shows it to be in large part Fletcher’s, see Furnivall, as cited, pp. xciii–xcvi. [↑]
[76] Cp. Seccombe and Allen, The Age of Shakspere, 1903, ii, 189. [↑]
[77] Alberti, Briefe betreffende den Zustand der Religion in Gross-Britannien, Hanover, 1752, ii, 429. Alberti reads “God” at the end of the passage; I follow Grosart’s edition. [↑]