CHARACTERISTIC CURVES OF COMPOSITION. 133 



words in each group is increased there is, of course, closer agreement 

 of their diagrams, and this became so evident in the earlier stages of 

 the investigation that the conclusion was soon reached that if a diagram 

 be made representing a very large number of words from a given au- 

 thor, it will not differ sensibly from any other diagram representing 

 an equally large number of words from the same author. Such a 

 diagram would then reflect the persistent peculiarities of this author 

 in the use of words of different lengths and might be called the char- 

 acteristic curve of his composition. Curves similarly formed from 

 anything that he had ever written could not differ materially from 

 this." (The italics are mine.) After some preliminary work which 

 seemed to bear out the conclusion ventured above, the writer states : 

 "From the examination thus far made I am convinced that 100,000 

 words will be necessary and sufficient to furnish the characteristic 

 curve of a writer — that is to say, if a curve is constructed from 

 100,000 words of a writer, taken from any one of his productions, 

 then a second curve constructed from another 100,000 words would be 

 practically identical with the first — and that this curve would, in 

 general, differ from that formed in the same way from the composition 

 of another writer, to such an extent that one could always oe dis- 

 tinguished from the other." 



Such is the author's own statement of his theory, which the facts 

 adduced apparently support. The culminating test consisted in the 

 examination of different groups of 100,000 or more words from each 

 of several authors, and it was found that the corresponding graphs 

 did actually coincide. This, in the words of the author, 'must be 

 regarded as convincing evidence of the soundness of the original 

 assumption. ' 



The existence and uniqueness of characteristic curves being 

 granted, its practical application as a test of disputed authorship is 

 obvious. To quote again, "If it can be proved that the characteristic 

 curve exhibited by an analysis of 'David Copperfield' is identical with 

 that of 'Oliver Twist/ of 'Barnaby Eudge,' of 'Great Expectations,' 

 etc., and that it differs sensibly from that of 'Vanity Fair,' or 'Eugene 

 Aran,' or 'Eobinson Crusoe,' or 'Don Quixote,' or anything else, in 

 fact, then the conclusion will be tolerably certain that whenever it 

 appears it means Dickens. ' ' 



The title of Dr. Mendenhall's second paper, 'A Mechanical Solu- 

 tion of a Literary Problem,' refers to the application of this theory to 

 the Bacon- Shakespeare controversy, which, we are told, formed the 

 objective point of the whole investigation. The characteristic curves 

 resulting from 400,000 words of the plays, and 200,000 words from 

 Bacon's 'Henry VII.,' 'Advancement of Learning' and the 'Essays' 

 were constructed and exhibited together as in Fig. 20. The con- 



