It is strange how sometimes an opinion altogether untenable, which some one has broached, is taken up by others, and comes in time to be accepted as true by a considerable number. It was some twenty-five years ago that a Miss Delia Bacon published an elaborate argument whose end was to show that not William Shakspere, but Lord Francis Bacon, was the author of the immortal plays which bear the former’s name. She first gave her discovery—unquestionably of the highest importance, if correct—to the world in a magazine article; but afterward embodied it in quite a large volume, to which Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote an introduction, though he did not accept the writer’s theory. This was the beginning of a controversy which is still alive. Perhaps the number has never been very large of those who believe that the glory of Shakspere belongs to Bacon; but there have always been some to entertain the preposterous notion, from Miss Bacon to Mrs. Henry Pott. The latter lady has recently issued a book which has excited some interest. The title—somewhat drawn out—is, “The Promus of Formularies and Elegancies (being private notes, _circa_ 1594, hitherto unpublished) of Francis Bacon, illustrated and elucidated by passages from Shakspere.” Mrs. Pott’s undertaking is one more in the line of Miss Delia Bacon. By a comparison of the Bacon notes, in forms of expression and thought, with passages of the Shakspere tragedies and comedies, she endeavors to verify the theory that the great English philosopher—author of the “Novum Organum,” and characterized by Pope as “the greatest, wisest, and meanest of mankind”—is also author of the works accorded to the Bard of Avon. That she succeeds in her task she herself evidently entertains no doubt, but probably not many will agree with her. She finds correspondences and similarities in passages compared where her readers will try in vain to find them; and it is putting the matter mildly to say that her undertaking is a great failure.