[Footnote 30: _The Mystery of Shakespeare’s Sonnets: an attempted Elucidation._ By Cuming Walters. _Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearian Plays and Poems._ By Jesse Johnson. _Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered and in part Re-arranged, with Introductory Chapters, Notes and a Reprint of the Original 1609 Edition._ By Samuel Butler.] There goes a story that an ingenuous youth, who had the privilege of an introduction to Lord Beaconsfield, resolved to make the best of the occasion, by extracting, if possible, from that astute political sage the secret of success in life. It might take the form, he thought, of a little practical advice. For that advice, explaining the object with which it was asked, he accordingly applied. “Yes,” said Lord Beaconsfield, “I think I can give you some advice which may possibly be of use to you. Never trouble yourself about The Man in the Iron Mask, and never get into a discussion about the authorship of the Letters of Junius.” In all seriousness we think it is high time that the “closure” should be applied to a debate on another “mystery” of which every one must be tired to death, except perhaps those who contribute to it. If some progress could be made towards the solution of the Mystery of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, if there was the faintest indication of any dawn on the darkness, even the wearied reviewer would be patient. But the thing remains exactly where it was, before this appalling literary epidemic set in. During the last three or four years scarcely a month has passed without its “monograph,” many of these treatises, mere replicas of their predecessors, differing only in degrees of stupidity and uselessness. Mr. Cuming Walters’ volume, sensible enough and intelligent, we quite concede, simply thrashes the straw. It professes to be an original contribution to the question. There is not a view or theory in it, which is not now a platitude to every one who has had the patience to follow this controversy. It analyses the Sonnets; they have been analysed hundreds of times. It asks who was W. H.; it answers the question as it has been answered _usque ad nauseam_. It discusses the dark lady, and lands us in the same shifting quagmire of opinion in which Mr. Tyler and his coadjutors and opponents have been floundering for the last four years. It assumes, it rejects, it questions, it suggests, what has been assumed, rejected, questioned, and suggested over and over again. Indeed, it may now be said with literal truth that, unless some fresh discovery is made, nothing new, whether in the way of absurdity or sense, can be advanced on this subject. But books are multiplied with such rapidity and in such prodigious numbers in these days, that they thrive, like cannibals, on one another. The last comer is simply its forgotten predecessor in disguise.