In the account of Webster and his Writings, prefixed to his Works by their able editor Mr. Dyce, that editor finds it necessary to bestow much pains in showing that John Webster the Dramatist and Player, was not John Webster the Puritan and Chaplain in the Army; but on the other hand Mr. Payne Collier, who is a great authority in our stage literature, contends that he was one and the same person, and that when in the Prefatory Address to his Saint's Guide, he speaks of the “damnable condition” from which the Lord in his wonderful mercy had brought him, he could hardly mean any thing but his condition as a player. It remained then to be argued whether either of these persons were the John Webster, Practitioner in Physic and Chirurgery, who wrote or compiled a work entitled Metalographia, a volume of Sermons entitled The Judgement set and the Books opened, and a tract called _Academiarum Examen_, or the Examination of Academies, wherein is discussed and examined the Matter, Method, and Customs of Academic and Scholastic Learning, and the insufficiency thereof discovered and laid open: as also some expedients proposed for the reforming of schools and the perfecting and promoting of all kind of science. A powerful Tract Mr. Dyce calls it; and it must have been thought of some importance in its day, for it provoked an answer from Seth Ward afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, and Wilkins afterwards the well known Bishop of Chester, (from whom Peter Wilkins may perhaps have been named) wrote in it an Epistle to the Author. One of these Websters wrote a remarkable book against the then prevalent belief in witchcraft, though he was himself a believer in astrology and held that there are great and hidden virtues in metals and precious stones, as they are by Nature produced, by mystical Chemistry prepared and exalted, or commixed and insculped in their due and fit constellation. Which of the John Websters was this? If it has not been satisfactorily ascertained, whether there were one, two, three or four John Websters after so much careful investigation by the most eminent bibliologists, though it is not supposed that on the part of any John Webster there was any design to conceal himself and mystify the public, by whom can the question be answered concerning the authorship of this Opus, except by me the Opifex, and those few persons trusted and worthy of the trust, who are, like me, secret as the grave?