In spite, however, of all positive evidence to the contrary, Mr. Theobald proceeds to bolster up his contention that Bacon had time, and to spare, for literary pursuits, by the following most amazing piece of logic. He contends, in the first place, that “an estimate of the entire literary output of Bacon, as a scientific and philosophical writer, proves the amount to be really somewhat small.” He takes the fourteen volumes of Spedding’s _Life and Works_, subtracts the prefaces, notes, editorial comments, and the biographical narrative, puts aside as of “no literary significance whatever,” all business letters, speeches, State papers, etc., and thus reduces the total amount of literature to Bacon’s credit in the seven volumes devoted to the _Life_ to some 375 pages. “If we calculate the whole amount contained in the fourteen volumes, we shall find it may be reckoned at about six such volumes, each containing 520 pages. On this method of calculation and selection, all that Mr. Theobald can find, “for his whole life, amounts to about 70 pages per annum, less than six pages a month.” Turning from Bacon to Shakespeare, Mr. Theobald finds that here again is a man whose literary output has been greatly exaggerated, for “if the Shakespeare poetry was the only work of William Shakespeare, certainly he was not a voluminous writer. _Thirty-one years may be taken as a moderate estimate of the duration of his literary life, i.e., from 1585 till his death in 1616._ And the result is 37 plays and the minor poems--not two plays for each year.” Mr. Theobald, it will be seen, possesses the same weakness for statistics that Mr. Dick evinced for King Charles’ head; he drops in his little estimate in season and out of season, and his appraisements are as manifold as they are fallacious. The period of Shakespeare’s dramatic output was confined to twenty years, from 1591 to 1611--if he had continued writing plays till his death in 1616, Bacon’s alleged playwriting would not have ceased with such significant suddenness in 1611. But what conclusion does Mr. Theobald arrive at as the result of his estimates? No less than this, that if the whole of Shakespeare, and the whole of Bacon’s acknowledged works belong to the same author, “the writer was not a voluminous author--_not by any means so voluminous as Miss Braddon_ or Sir Walter Scott.” That Mr. Theobald should not hesitate to class Miss Braddon’s novels with the plays of Shakespeare, which belong to the supreme rank of literature, or even with Bacon’s “royal mastery of language never surpassed, never perhaps equalled,” is the most astounding link in this astounding chain of so-called evidence. But Mr. Theobald advances it with the utmost confidence. “Therefore,” he sums up, “let this objection stand aside; it vanishes into invisibility as soon as it is accurately tested”--_i.e._, weighed up, like groceries, by the pound.