en he pointed out one by one the elements that in
his opinion made the Baconian theory ridiculous.

"But," followed Mr. Arbuthnot, "Shakespere had no education, and no
person without an extremely good education could have written the play
erroneously published under the name of William Shakespere."

"If," retorted Mr. Payne, "Shakespere had been without education, do
you think the fact would have escaped the notice of such bitter and
unscrupulous enemies as Nash, Greene, and others, who hated him for his
towering superiority?"

Upon Mr. Arbuthnot admitting that he studies Shakespere merely from a
"curio" point of view, and that for the poetry he cared nothing, Mr.
Payne replied by quoting Schopenhauer: "A man who is insensible to
poetry, be he who he may, must be a barbarian."

Burton, who regarded himself as a poet, approved of the sentiment; Dr.
Steingass, who wrote execrable verses in English which neither
rhymed nor scanned, though they were intended to do both, was no
less satisfied; Mr. Ashbee, who looked at matters solely from a
bibliographical point of view, dissented; and Mr. Arbuthnot sweetly
changed the conversation to Balzac; with the result, however, of another
tempest, for on this subject Burton, who summed up Balzac as "a great
repertory of morbid anatomy," could never see eye to eye with Balzac's
most enthusiastic English disciple.

At Oxford, Burton met Professor Sayce, and did more literary work "under
great difficulties" at the Bodleian, though he escaped all the evil
effects; but against its wretched accommodation for students and its
antediluvian methods he never ceased to inveigh. Early in August he was
at Ramsgate and had the amusement of mixing with a Bank Holiday crowd.
But he was amazingly restless, and wanted to be continually in motion.
No place pleased him more than a day or two.

155. The Gypsy, August 1888.

Among the deal tables in Burton's rooms at Trieste was one devoted to
a work on the Gypsies, a race concerning whom, as we have seen, he had
long been curious. He had first proposed to himself to write on the
subject when he was in Sind, where he had made investigations concerning
the affinity between the Jats and the Gypsies; and now with abundance of
leisure he set about the work in earnest. But it was never finished,
and the fragment which was published in 1898 [557] contains, Mr.
Watts-Dunton [558] assures me, many errors. Burton's idea was to
describe the Gypsy in