Dr. Owen himself concedes that “some parts of the deciphered material”--viz., those parts which have not their origin in Shakespeare, Spenser, and the works of the other masques--“are not equal in literary power, poetic thought, nor artistic construction to the well-known efforts of Shakespeare,” but he accounts for this inequality on the ground that “the necessities for concealment were so great as to make the difficulties of the cipher serious, and artistic re-construction impossible.” If it be granted, for the sake of argument, that the quotations from the plays, which appear in these “interiour” works, were from the pen of Shakespeare, and that the original parts are the product of Bacon, then Spedding’s contention that there are not “five lines together to be found in Bacon which could be mistaken for Shakespeare, or five lines in Shakespeare which could be mistaken for Bacon, by one who was familiar with their several styles, and practised in such observations,” is proved up to the hilt. Indeed, and without any such concession being allowed, it is impossible to compare the original lines with the pirated passages in these cipher books, and accept the two as the work of the same hand. Dr. Owen, who is evidently neither “familiar with the several styles” of Shakespeare and Bacon, nor “practised in such observations,” invites his readers “to set aside the different names upon the title pages, and ask themselves whether two or more men could have written so exactly alike.” His conclusions are equally destitute of logic or critical acumen: “Either Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare were the same man, at least so far as the writings are concerned; or else, for once in the history of mankind, two men, absolutely dissimilar in birth, in education, and in bringing up, had the same thoughts, used the same words, piled up the same ideas, wrote upon the same subjects, and thought, wrote, talked, and dreamed absolutely alike.” It is true that Shakespeare, in cipher, bears an amazing likeness to Shakespeare in the plays, but if the Shakespeare in the cipher is to be compared with the Bacon either here or in his recognised works, Dr. Owen’s conclusions are palpably absurd.