friend of the Puritans. How could he have had any sympathy with a sect that condemned all pleasure and play-acting as wicked and sinful? When he ridicules the Puritans in the character of Malvolio, and makes Sir Toby Belch exclaim, "Dost thou think, that because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?" he doubtless expressed his own sentiments. We must never forget that the Catholic Church, however inimical to science, has ever been the friend and encourager of art, the patron of painting, of poetry, music, and the drama, and never the enemy of social pleasure; and it is not improbable that the Poet had more sympathy with this ancient Church, which favored his art and chimed in with his inclinations, than with the new one that frowned on and condemned both as sinful.

These are things that, I imagine, cannot fail to strengthen the conviction that the Prince and the Poet are one and the

same person; and I may conclude my direct comparison, by remarking, that the

sculptor who fashioned the statue of the Poet, now in the New York Central Park, formed a likeness as near that of the Prince, as the likeness of the Prince in the Poet's writings is remarkably like that of the Poet.*

* In view of Prince Henry's kindness toward the tapsters, his ready recognition of Falstaff's witty page, his mercy toward “the man who railed against our person yesterday," his horror of war in all its forms, his anxiety for the safety of the Harfleurians, and especially his gentle appreciation of every common soldier in his army, I do not see that Mr. Appleton Morgan is justified in his declaration, that Shakespeare had not a particle of sympathy with the people, and cared only for those of noble blood. He portrayed men as he saw them; often brutal and inhuman as they were; but he himself was never ungentle toward the lowly.

In the Poet's time, all the world thought more of the “highborn" than of the "low-born;" and it is unreasonable to expect a poet of the Sixteenth Century to be imbued with the advanced democratic sentiments of the Nineteenth. Pretty much the same kind of sentiment reigns at the present day in Germany, for even the students there have little respect for anybody except those that are students or have been students; the rest are cattle.

There is much that is interesting in Mr. Morgan's recent book, 66 Shakespeare in Fact and in Criticism," and his edition of Shakespeare's Plays, published by the New York Shakespeare Society, of which Mr. Morgan is President, is an admirable work; but I am inclined to think that many of his conclusions are by no means tenable. He leans strongly toward the Baconians, and exhibits anything but a reverent spirit toward the Poet.

CHAPTER XVII.

MR. DONNELLY AND HIS CRYPTOGRAM.*

HEN somebody asked a Washing

WHEN somebody

ton statistician to collect certain statistics for him, the first inquiry he made was, "What do you want proved?" This is precisely the spirit in which the Baconians have gone to work; they are not seeking for truth, or for that which facts and figures may show; but, having once conceived what they consider a plausible theory, they twist everything into facts and figures to suit this theory.

This, it may be said, is an assertion that cuts both ways; for it applies as much to my theory as to theirs. True; but will any one deny that mine is nat

*This chapter was in the hands of the printer before I saw Mr. Donnelly's book. I do not find, however, anything material to change in it, and I think it worth standing as it is. The next chapter will deal directly with "The Great Cryptogram."

ural, probable, and in accordance with. experience and analogy, while theirs is the contrary? Who has ever heard of such a thing as they propound? and who has not heard of such a thing as I have propounded? Had more been known of the every-day life of the Poet, his resemblance to the Prince would probably have been noticed long ago. In the spirit in which the Baconians have gone to work, you may prove anything; you may just as easily prove that Shakespeare wrote Bacon's works as that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's; you may make even figures (ciphers) lie like fiends; and things that have no more connection with each other than fire and water you may combine, and use them as wonderful evidences of the truth of your discovery. Like Macbeth's "juggling fiends," they

Palter with us in a double sense;

They keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope.

Of all the books which I have read, that which contains the most ingenious

example of special pleading (let the student mark that word) is "The Authorship of Shakespeare," by Judge Holmes. This judge's performance reminds me forcibly of the astute lawyer of the olden time who declared: "Give me but three lines of any man's handwriting, and I shall send him to the gallows!" Never did lawyer, holding a brief, argue more ingeniously and skilfully to win his case; yet never did lawyer, holding such a brief, fail more completely to convince. the jury of the truth of his plea. If his book live at all, it can live only as a rare example of skill in special pleading, or as a specimen of what may be done in such pleading.

But this work seems almost unknown compared with that of another adventurer in this quixotic field, whose forthcoming work, to achieve a similar end, has been more widely heralded and more extensively advertised than perhaps any other work of this age. Perhaps no book of modern times has called forth so many leading articles, so many news