* * * * * A DISPUTED WILL. DEAR SIR,--Mr. DONNELLY'S cryptogram, showing BACON to be the author of all SHAKSPEARE'S plays, is a wonderful discovery. The principle only needs to be applied with sufficient ingenuity and perseverance, to revolutionise the whole field of literary history. I myself have only had time to apply it in a few instances, but have already got the really valuable result that NEGRETTI and ZAMBRA wrote most of the works of MILTON. DAY and MARTIN LUTHER wrote _Sandford and Merton_, and Sir WALTER SCOTT wrote the ballad with the refrain "_Two Lovely Black Eyes_." CHARLES THACKERAY'S works were entirely written by WILLIAM MAKEPEACE DICKENS. Hence the cryptogrammatic name. I am working as hard at the theory as the somewhat unelastic rules of this establishment will permit, and this morning I caught a cryptogram crawling up the window-pane. Aha! excuse my glove, I must dissemble, _Colney-Hatchwell_. Yours, THE "B" IN BOTH. SIR,--You are performing a truly noble and philanthropic work in throwing open your columns to a subject which must inevitably seem "_caviare_ to the general" (BACON). To myself, personally, the raising of the controversy at the present time is annoying, because I happen to have hit independently on exactly the same idea as Mr. DONNELLY'S; viz., that there is an underground narrative running through SHAKSPEARE. DARWIN and WALLACE, you may remember, discovered the origin of species simultaneously, so why not I and DONNELLY the origin of SHAKSPEARE? But my cryptogram leads to an entirely different result from Mr. DONNELLY'S, who has, I am certain, being led off on a false scent. Instead of multiplying every 270th word, as he does, by the number of full-stops in the page, and then dividing the result by the number of years during which ANNE HATHAWAY is supposed to have resided at Stratford-on-Avon, he should first have discovered the total quantity of words in all SHAKSPEARE'S plays and sonnets, and after that the quantity in the _Novum Organon_; then reducing the probable salary which BACON received as Lord Chancellor, _each year_, down to farthings, he should have divided (_not_ multiplied) them all into each other, and brought them to decimals, and then applied _that_ result to the plays. The process is a little complicated, but I can't make it clearer at present. Anyhow, the entrancing interest of the story so obtained can be judged from the headings of the chapters.