"He who hath filled up all numbers" means unquestionably "He that hath written every kind of poetry."[5]
Alexander Pope the poet declares that he himself "lisped in numbers for the numbers came." Ben Jonson therefore bears testimony to the fact that Bacon was so great a poet that he had in poetry written that "which may be compar'd or preferr'd either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome."
But in 1623 Ben Jonson had said of the AUTHOR of the plays
"Or when thy sockes were on
Leaue thee alone, for the comparison
Of all, that insolent Greece or haughtie Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come."
Surely the statements in the "Discoveries" were intended to tell us who was the AUTHOR of the plays.
After perusing these contemporary evidences, and they might be multiplied, it is difficult to understand how anyone can venture to dispute Bacon's position as pre-eminent in poetry. But it may be of interest to those who doubt whether Bacon (irrespective of any claim to the authorship of the plays) could be deemed to be a great poet, to quote here the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who in his "Defence of Poetry" says
"Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect. It is a strain which distends and then bursts the circumference of the reader's mind, and pours itself forth together with it into the universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy."
The immortal plays are the "Greatest Birth of Time," and contain a short summary of the wisdom of the world from ancient times, and they exhibit an extent and depth of knowledge in every branch which has never been equalled at any period of the world's history. In classic lore, as the late Mr. Churton Collins recently pointed out, they evince the ripest scholarship. And this is confirmed by classical scholars all the world over.
None but the profoundest lawyers can realise the extent of the knowledge not only of the theory but of the practice of Law which is displayed. Lord Campbell says that Lord Eldon [supposed to have been the most learned of judges] need not have been ashamed of the law of Shakespeare. And as an instance of the way in which the members of the legal profession look up to the mighty author I may mention that some years ago, at a banquet of a Shakespeare Society at which Mr. Sidney Lee and the writer were present, the late Mr. Crump, Q.C., editor of the Law Times, who probably possessed as much knowledge of law as any man in this country, declared that to tell him that the plays were not written by the greatest lawyer the world has ever seen, or ever would see, was to tell him what he had sufficient knowledge of law to know to be nonsense. He said also that he was not ashamed to confess that he himself, though he had some reputation for knowledge of law, did not possess sufficient legal knowledge to realise one quarter of the law that was contained in the Shakespeare plays.
It requires a philologist to fully appreciate what the enormous vocabulary employed in the plays implies.