corroboration of history, that they were only the forgeries of a precocious boy. To just as moral a certainty are the handiwork of the Elohist and the Jehovist discernible in the Hebrew Scriptures, and just as absolutely incapable of an alternative explanation are the ear-marks of the Shakespearean text. Hallam, whose eyes were never opened to the truth, and who lived and died innocent of any anti-Shakespearean theory (though he sighed for a "Shakespeare of heaven," turning in disgust from the "Shakespeare of earth," of whom only he could read in history), noticing the phases, unintelligible and improper except in the sense of their primitive roots, which occur so copiously in the plays, proceeds to say: "In the 'Midsummer-Night's Dream' these are much less frequent than in his later dramas; but here we find several instances. Thus, 'Things base and vile, holding no _quantity_' (for _value_) rivers that 'have overborne their _continents_' (the _continenti riva_ of-Horace); '_compact_ of imagination;' 'something of great _constancy_' (for _consistency_); 'sweet Pyramus _translated_ there;' 'the law of Athens, which by no means we may _extenuate_,' etc. I have considerable doubts," continues Mr. Hallam, "whether any of these expressions would be found in the contemporary prose of Elizabeth's reign, which was less overrun with pedantry than that of her successor. Could authority be produced for Latinisms so forced, it is still not very likely that one who did not understand their proper meaning would have introduced them into poetry." * * "Literature of Europe," Part II, ch. vi, sec. 81. "To be told that he played a trick to a brother player in a licentious amour, or that he died in a drunken frolic.. does not exactly inform us of the man who wrote "Lear." If there was a Shakespeare of earth, as I suspect, there was also one of heaven, and it is of him that we desire to know something." Id. Part II, ch. vi, sec. 35, note. Young Chatterton deceived the most profound scholars of his day, and his manuscripts stood every test but this; but under it they revealed the fact, so soon to receive the mournful {208}social speech in those days, even in the highest walks of life--we happen to have very graphic accounts of Queen Elizabeth's sayings and retorts courteous (as, e. g., when she boxed Essex's ears and told him to go and be hanged)--it requires considerable credulity to assign this classic diction to a rustic apprentice from Stratford, who, at "about eighteen," begins his dramatic labors, fresh from the shambles, and with no hiatus for a college course between.