At which he was so indignant that he angrily pirouetted himself right out of sight. But he re-appeared almost immediately, and went on as if nothing had happened:-- "Having proved to you that neither Bacon nor Shakespeare wrote his own works, I will now proceed to tell you who wrote them." "What! The lot?" "Certainly. The similarity of thought in Bacon's _Essays_ and Shakespeare's _Plays_ prove that they were written by the same man. That man, as you may see by the legal knowledge betrayed alike in the _Plays_ and the _Essays_, must have studied the law. But if he wrote all the books which I attributed to him, he could not have had time to practise it. Moreover, in the atmosphere of the law courts a man could have preserved neither the exquisite sweetness nor the human grandeur of the so-called Shakespeare's _Plays_." "There's something in that," said I. "Very well," continued Roderick, curveting so swiftly that even as one foot touched the floor the other seemed to be kicking the ceiling, "we have now established these facts:-- "First, that the initials of the author of the so-called Shakespeare's _Plays_ are 'W. H.' "Secondly, that he had an intensely painful love affair in his youth, and married another woman in his later years. "Thirdly, that he was a lawyer by education but not by practice. "Now, who was he? We have yet more evidence to aid us in identifying him. There's Spenser's plaint that 'our pleasant Willy,' 'the man whom Nature's self had made to mock herself and truth to imitate,' had been 'dead of late,' and 'with him all joy and merriment.' We have also the lines in the _Sonnets_:-- Make but my name thy love and love that still; And then thou lov'st me, for my name is Will. The first name of 'W. H.,' therefore, is Will. And this Will had great trouble at one period of his life, which silenced all his joy and merriment. Again I ask you, Who was the man?" And the Spirit, bubbling and shaking with eagerness, peered anxiously into my face. "What great Scotsman of that great period," he continued, screaming rather than speaking, "was brought up to the law and abandoned it for the pursuit of literature and poetry? was driven nearly to distraction by the loss of a mistress whom he loved more dearly than life? went abroad to seek solace, and, returning after many years, married another lady? wrote and left extant in his own name, sonnets which are acknowledged to be perfect models of sweetness and delicacy, sonnets which have never been eclipsed since his death? who was the Scottish poet, friend of the London actors; friend of Ben Jonson; the man who has left on record in British literature the report of his conversations with Jonson; the man who, as you have to-night seen by your landlord's letter, knew Shakespeare and lent him plays which are not known now by the names they then bore--come, come, man, who is this W. H.? Cannot you guess it even now?" "William of Hawthornden?"