The audacity of the assertion, by a young woman, a school-teacher, in no way distinguished or anywise eminent, that the idol of these centuries, and of the English-speaking race, was a mere effigy of straw--a mere dummy for an unknown immortal, was too tremendous! Men {187}stood aghast. Was it a chimera of a mind diseased! Sneered at in her own country, she went to England, but found that--while at home she was treading only on adverse sentiment--_there_ she was openly tampering with vested rights, almost with the unwritten constitution of England. She made a few personal friends, and found some sympathizers, but all England was arrayed against her. She came back, heart-broken, and died eight months later. Mr. William Henry Smith, of London, in September, 1856, appeared with his "Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare's Plays? A Letter to Lord Ellesmere," in which the Baconian theory was very plainly and circumspectly laid down and admirably maintained. * The presumption once disturbed, inquiry began to be diverted from the well-worn track of the commentators, and the result has been, we think, a candid, rational, and patient attempt to study the Shakespearean writings by the aid of contemporary history rather than by mere conjecture, and by the record rather than by fancy, guess-work, and gossip. * This "Letter," which was reprinted in "Littell's Living Age," (No. 56), for November, 1856, was, the following year (1857) elaborated into the valuable work on which we have so unsparingly drawn in these pages, and to which we acknowledge our exceeding obligation ("Bacon and Shakespeare: An Inquiry touching Players, Playhouses, and Play writers in the days of Elizabeth. By William Henry Smith. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1857"). In this work Mr. Smith (in his preface) asserts that at the date of his letter to Lord Ellesmere, he had never seen Miss Bacon's article in "Putnam's," but, it is to be observed, no where claims to have been the originator of the "Baconian Theory." It is too early in the day--the time has been too short--for the reaction to have proved equal to the action, and verified the physical rule; but three well {188}defined anti-Stratfordian theories have offered themselves already, as substitutes for the mossy and venerable fossil remains of the commentators. These theories are: 1. The Delia Bacon Theory; 2. The Baconian Theory; and 3. The New Theory (as we are compelled, for want of a better name, to call it). THE DELIA BACON THEORY.