398 A Century of Science 



show that Shakespeare was lacking in fondness for 

 the productions of his own genius, what shall be 

 said of the notion that Bacon spent half his life 

 in writing works the paternity of which he must 

 forever disown? 



This question is answered by Mr. Ignatius Don- 

 nelly, a writer who speculates with equal infelicity 

 on all subjects, but never suffers for lack of bold- 

 ness. He published in 1887 a book even bigger 

 than that of Mrs. Pott, for it has nearly 1000 

 pages. Its title is, " The Great Cryptogram," and 

 its thesis is, that Bacon really did claim the author- 

 ship of the Shakespeare plays. Only the claim was 

 made in a cipher, and if you simply make some 

 numbers mean some words, and other words mean 

 other numbers, and perform a good many sums in 

 what the Mock Turtle called " ambition, distrac- 

 tion, uglification, and derision," you will be able 

 to read this claim between the lines, along with 

 much other wonderful information. Thus does the 

 arithmetical Donnelly carry us quite a long stride 

 nearer to the reductio ad absurdum, or suicide 

 point, than we were left by Mrs. Pott, with her 

 lisping and limping comparisons. 



But before we come to the jumping-off place, let 

 us pause for a moment and take a retrospective 

 glance at the natural history of the Bacon-Shake- 



