But despite the appalling evidence of poetical incapacity presented by this versification of the Psalms, a staunch Baconian, by a train of argument which is only equalled by that employed by Mr. Theobald, has proved, to his own satisfaction, that Bacon was a poet, by locating the position which the Plays occupy in the scheme of Bacon’s works. This ingenious logician has discovered that the two most extraordinary facts connected with Bacon’s philosophy are (_a_) that the most eminent students have been unable to understand his “method of interpretation,” and (_b_) that the last three parts of the _Instauratio Magna_ are apparently wholly lost. Because Ellis and Spedding both declare that “of his philosophy they can make nothing,” and that “he failed in the very thing in which he was most bent,” therefore he must be a poet. Because the last three books of the _Instauratio_ are “apparently wholly lost”--which is the writer’s perversion of the indubitable fact that they were never written--therefore the comedies, histories, and tragedies of Shakespeare actually form the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of “the great work.” Firstly (to present this argument fairly), Bacon declared his intention to insinuate his philosophy into men’s minds by a method which would provoke no controversy; secondly (this is not exactly proved, but just stated as a fact), Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare; and thirdly, the Plays are the treasure house of all art, science, and wisdom. The natural and inevitable deduction is that they must form the missing--_i.e._, the unwritten--parts of the _Instauratio Magna_. I am afraid that we must decline to accept so ingenious a piece of sophistry. Until it is proved that the Psalms are a forgery, or that they have been erroneously attributed to Bacon, we have a gauge of his poetical ability which is fatal to his pretensions to the authorship of the Plays, of Spenser, or of any one of the books which we are asked to believe emanated from his stupendous intellect. “_Did Shakespeare Write Bacon?_”