The 1623 Shakespeare Folio will be found to be one of the most perfect examples of the printer's art extant, because no work has been produced under such difficult conditions for the printer. There are few mistakes in pagination or spelling which are not intentional. The work is a masterpiece of enigma and cryptic design. The lines "To the Reader" opposite to the title-page are a table or code of numbers. The same lines and the lettering on the title-page form another table. The ingenuity displayed in this manipulation of words and numbers to create analogies is almost beyond the comprehension of the human mind. The mispaginations are all intentional and have cryptic meanings. The acme of wit is the substitution of 993 for 399 on the last page of the tragedies; a hundred has been omitted in "Hamlet," 257 following 156, and other errors made in order to obtain this result on the last page. The manner in which the printer's signatures have been arranged with the pages is equally wonderful. The name William Shakespeare must have been created without reference to him of Stratford, who possibly bore or had assigned to him a somewhat similar name. A great superstructure is built up on the exact spelling of the words William Shakespeare. The year 1623 was specially selected for the issue of the complete volume of the plays, because of the marvellous relations which the numbers composing it bear to the names William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon, to the year 1560, in which the birth of Bacon is registered, and to 1564 and 1616, the reputed dates of the birth and death of the Stratford man. Nor do the wonders end here. The use of numerical analogies has been carried into the construction of the English language. All this, and much more, will be made manifest when the work of Mr. E. V. Tanner comes to be investigated and appreciated. He has made the greatest literary discovery of all time. The wonder is how it has been possible for anyone to pierce the veil and reveal the secrets of the volume. The value of the Shakespeare Folio 1623 will be enhanced. It will stand alone as the greatest monument of the achievements of the human intellect. To any literary critic who should honour this book by noticing it, it is probable the foregoing statements may seem extravagant and untrustworthy. To such the request is now made that before making any comment he will inspect the proof of the foregoing statements which are in the writer's possession. The dramas of Shakespeare are, by universal consent, placed at the head of all literature. The invitation is now put forth in explicit terms, and facilities are offered for the investigation of the truth, or otherwise, of every statement made in the foregoing paragraph. FOOTNOTES: [43] "A Life of Shakespeare," 1589, 2nd Edition, p. 308. CHAPTER XVII. THE AUTHORIZED VERSION OF THE BIBLE, 1611.