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it; and the lecture concluded with a reference to the glories of 
the literature of that day, and a comparison between the 
leisurely and painstaking way of thinking and acting in former 
times, and the feverish spirit of the present day which exercises 
a perturbing influence over our philosophy and literature. The 
advantages of our own day are great, the reader said, in the 
triumphal march of physical science, in the vastness of our 
intellectual horizon, in the richer complexity of our acquirements. 
But in the very diffusiveness of aims there is a greater danger. 
We seem to want that closeness of concentration which stamps 
the Elizabethan age as testified in a hundred ways by the 
written record found by the Royal Commissioner on Historical 
Manuscripts who overhauled the papers at Towneley Hall. 
That most interesting record is endorsed, ‘‘ The Spending of the 
Money of Robert Nowell,” and has been carefully edited by Dr. 
Grosart, of Blackburn, and published by him by subscription. 
THE AUTHENTICITY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
By HENRY HOULDING. March 19th, 1889. 
Mr. Houlding began by saying that he should not waste time 
in discussing what has been called the ‘‘ Bacon-Shakespeare 
theory,” which he characterised as mere lunacy. He went on 
to deal with the few facts of Shakespeare’s life which have come 
down to us. He then referred to the notices of the poet by 
his contemporaries, quoting and commenting upon several of 
these, especially the references by Greene, Chettle, Heminge, 
and Condell, and Ben Jonson, whose noble eulogium on Shake- 
peare, prefixed to the first folio, he read. He pointed out the 
affectionate and honourable regard which the great dramatist 
almost invariably received from his contemporaries, and spoke 
of the friendship of Southampton for the poet, the favour 
bestowed upon him by Queen Elizabeth, and his popularity with 
the general public. He went on to deal with the sonnets of 
Shakespeare, quoting Professor Dowden’s estimate of these 
remarkable compositions, and said that there could not be any 
doubt that the author of the sonnets was the author of the plays. 
He then went on to speak of ‘‘ that miraculous volume,” as he 
called it, published by Heminge and Condell in 1628, and 
showed how ‘the veritable selt of Shakespeare’ was revealed 
therein to such as had the faculty to discern and sympathise 
with all that is noble, beautiful, and exalted in humanity. Not 
only from the poet’s sympathy with all that was pure and 
