Lord Bacon could as easily have created this planet as he could have written Hamlet.
Source, in full
According to Moncure Conway (Thomas Carlyle (1881) p. 122) Carlyle said this in reply to a Baconian enthusiast who was attempting to convert him; alternatively reported as "the planets", remark in discussion, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).