From the original of Hilliard, in the collection of The Right Honble the Earl of Verulam.] Mr. Sinnett, in common with Mr. Theobald and, indeed, all other upholders of the Baconian theory, has a distinctly original way of dealing with matters of fact. Mr. Theobald invents his facts to suit his argument; Mr. Sinnett ignores all facts that prove intractable. Thus Mr. Sinnett in _The National Review_: “All through the plays there is no allusion to Stratford.” And again: “While Bacon seems to have gone North to curry favour with James on his accession, _Macbeth_ was written just after that event. Certainly there is no reason to suppose that Shakespeare ever went to Scotland.” What nonsense is all this! Although personalities are rare in the Plays, there are a number of literal references to Stratford, and Shakespeare’s native county, in _The Taming of the Shrew_; and local allusions are also to be found in the second part of _Henry IV._ and _The Merry Wives of Windsor_. In his _Life of William Shakespeare_, Mr. Lee enumerates several instances in point. “Barton Heath,” we read is, “Barton-on-the-Heath, the home of Shakespeare’s aunt, Edmund Lambert’s wife, and of her sons. The tinker, in _The Taming of the Shrew_, confesses that he has run up a score with Marian Hacket, the fat ale wife of Wincot. The references to Wincot and the Hackets are singularly precise. The name of the maid of the inn is given as Cicely Hacket, and the ale-house is described in the stage direction as ‘on a heath.’” Again, in _Henry IV._, the local reference to William Visor, of Woncot, and the allusions to the region of the Cotswold Hills, and the peculiar Cotswold custom of sowing “red lammas” wheat at an unusually early season of the agricultural year, are unmistakable. Mr. Sinnett’s assumptions that Bacon went to Scotland and that Shakespeare did not, are entirely arbitrary. In point of fact we may be quite sure that Bacon did not go to Scotland, and we have no reason to believe that Shakespeare was ever in Venice, or Sardis, or “a wood near Athens.” The author of the _Letters from Hell_ was not under suspicion because he could not claim to have been ferried across the Styx to get his local colour.