Excerpt from The Authorship of Shakespeare Bacon found it to be just so with the history of Winds; for, says he, it is evident, that the dullness of men is such and so infelicitous, that when things are put before their feet, they do not see them, unless admonished, but pass right on. It would stand to reason, that the most precious things would not be strewn abroad thus by a mere swine-herd, if they had not come into his possession in an accidental or some other way, and without his having much knowledge of their real value nor by a coney-catch ing, beer-drinking idler, or a common play-actor, or even a prosperous stage-manager. It must be ad mitted that learning does not come by instinct; nor can sensible men be made to believe that high phi losophy can come by fantastic miracle. There never was any royal road to mathematics, though there have been very royal mathematicians. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.