extraordinary
man. That two men each severally so extraordinary should have been
living at the same time in the same place was a very extraordinary
thing. But would it diminish the wonder to suppose the two to be
one? So I say of Bacon and Shakespeare. That a human being
possessed of the faculties necessary to make a Shakespeare should
exist is extraordinary. That a human being possessed of the
necessary faculties to make Bacon should exist is extraordinary.
That two such human beings should have been living in London at the
same time was more extraordinary still. But that one man should
have existed possessing the faculties and opportunities necessary
to make _both_ would have been the most extraordinary thing of
all' (see Spedding's _Essays and Discussions_, 1879, pp. 371, 372).

'Great writers, especially being contemporary, have many features
in common, but if they are really great writers they write
naturally, and nature is always individual. I doubt whether there
are five lines together to be found in Bacon which could be
mistaken for Shakespeare, or five lines in Shakespeare which could
be mistaken for Bacon, by one who was familiar with their several
styles and practised in such observations' (_Ibid._, p. 373).

THE NON-JURORS

To anyone blessed or cursed with an ironical humour the troublesome
history of the Church of England since the Reformation cannot fail to
be an endless source of delight. It really is exciting. Just a little
more of Calvin and of Beza, half a dozen words here, or Cranmer's
pencil through a single phrase elsewhere; a 'quantum suff.' of the men
'that allowed no Eucharistic sacrifice,' and away must have gone
beyond recall the possibility of the Laudian revival and all that
still appertains thereunto. We must have lost the 'primitive' men, the
Kens, the Wilsons, the Knoxes, the Kebles, the Puseys. On the other
hand, but for the unfaltering language of the Articles, the hearty
tone of the Homilies, and the agreeable readiness of both sides to
curse the Italian impudence of the Bishop of Rome and all his
'detestable enormities,' our Anglican Church history could never have
been enriched with the names or sweetened by the memories of the
Romaines, the Flavels, the Venns, the Simeons, and of many thousand
unnamed saints who finished their course in the fervent faith of
Evangelicalism. But on what a thread it has always hung! An
i