£ Shakespearian Criticism. 



eign of literature, and establish in his place the man who of all would 

 have been the most incapable of writing these dramas. The theory, 

 I believe, was originated by a lady of the name of Delia Bacon, but 

 whether she conjectured herself to be descended from the rival whom 

 she sets up against Shakespeare, I have no information. The craze 

 of this most mad lady was adopted and advocated in a book of some 

 six hundred infidel pages, by Mr. Nathaniel Holmes, of Missouri, who 

 is said, I blush to relate, to be a lawyer and a judge, although it is evi- 

 dent he is no judge of Shakespeare. The whole contention rests on 

 the assumption that it is impossible that a man of such slender attain- 

 ments, as Shakespeare is known to have been,*could have written these 

 wise, profound, brilliant, and altogether unparalleled dramas. But 

 just as it requires more credulity to disbelieve than to believe Christi- 

 anity, so it is much more difficult to disbelieve than to believe Shakes- 

 peare's authorship. No theory resting in mere skepticism and denial 

 can win its way or carry conviction. It is possible that the assign- 

 ment of the plays to Bacon is intended as a posthumous compensation 

 for the detriment which his moral character has suffered. But it will 

 not atone for his moral delinquencies, and his intellectual reputation 

 needs no enhancement. 



As to the evidence, the arguments adduced to support the theory 

 are of the flimsiest, most baseless, far-fetched and laughably puerjle 

 description — such as a sensible man might use in his dreams, but only 

 such stuff as dreams are made of. To these credulous persons trifles 

 light as air prove confirmation strong as holy writ. For example, 

 Shakespeare's manuscript contains few alterations or erasures ; conse- 

 quently he must have copied from Bacon's ! So some poet, in return- 

 ing something lent him by Bacon, accompanied it by some compo- 

 sition of his own, and remarked that while he did not give as good as 

 Bacon sent, yet he sent him 'measure for measure;" consequently, 

 Bacon wrote " Measure for Measure" ! This would seem better evi- 

 dence that the borrower himself wrote it. These are fair examples of 

 the arguments. On the other hand Bacon never claimed the plays in 

 his life, nor by any of his remains; no contemporary can be shown 

 ever to have suspected him as the author ; all contemporaries who 

 speak assign them to Shakespeare; and Bacon is the last man to 

 whom they can be attributed, because they are entirely foreign to his 

 style, as well in their glaring faults as in their magnificent beauties, 

 and because to assign them to him in addition to his acknowledged 

 works, would argue him a more superhuman genius than Shakespeare 

 and vastly greater than any who has ever lived. If Bacon had written 

 plays, would he have borrowed his plots, plagiarized some of his best lines 



