In propounding their theory that Bacon was the author of the plays attributed to Shakespeare, the Baconians rely on two main arguments: the plausibility of the idea that they should have emanated from the man whom Macaulay declared to possess the “most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men,” and the extraordinary unlikelihood that a man of Shakespeare’s origin and antecedents should have written them. More recently, the disclosure of the bi-literal and the “word” ciphers, running through certain editions of the plays, and in Bacon’s works, have placed a new weapon in the hands of Shakespeare’s traducers. Already some of the supporters of Bacon’s claims have assumed a sceptical attitude towards the “cipher speculations”--partly, I suspect, on account of their American origin--and Mr. A. P. Sinnett, whilst claiming that if the bi-literal cipher is substantiated, the Bacon case is demonstrated up to the hilt, hedges himself behind the assertion that the curious allegations now brought forward do not affect, one way or the other, the general force of the literary argument that supports the Baconian idea. But, unless a gigantic fraud is being attempted--which we have no reason to suppose is the case--Mrs. Elizabeth Wells Gallup’s bi-literal cipher can easily be substantiated. When this is accomplished, we only get to the point that Bacon claims to have been the author of the plays put forth by all his contemporaries, while the conviction still remains, as it was expressed by Carlyle, that “Bacon could no more have written _Hamlet_ than he could have made this planet.” It is interesting in this connection to briefly sum up the concensus of expert opinion that the leading scholars and students of Elizabethan literature hold on the subject. Mr. Sidney Lee, whose _Life of William Shakespeare_ has been called “the most useful, the most judicious, and the most authoritative of all existing biographies of the poet,” regards the theory as “fantastic.” The substance of Mr. Lee’s conclusions is that “the abundance of the contemporary evidence attesting Shakespeare’s responsibility for the works published under his name, gives the Baconian theory no rational right to a hearing; while such authentic examples of Bacon’s effort to write verse as survive prove, beyond all possibility of contradiction, that great as he was as a prose writer and a philosopher, he was incapable of penning any of the poetry assigned to Shakespeare. Defective knowledge and illogical, or casuistical, argument alone render any other conclusion possible.” [Illustration: Shakespeare Autographs _Conveyance of House in Blackfriars, 10th. March, 1612._ _Mortgage of House in Blackfriars, 11th. March, 1612._ _The three signatures to the Will, 25th. March, 1616._]