* Hunt versus Lawless, New York Superior Court, November, 1879. And see, also, Moore versus United States, 2 Otto, United States, 270. Criminal Law Journal, Jersey City, N. J., March, 1881. Arty "Calligraphy and the Whittaker Case." ** The curious reader is referred to "Supercheries Literaries, Pastiches, etc.," one of the unique labors of the late M. Delapierre. London, Trubner & Co., 1872. Were the question before us, "Was the author of these works a poet, statesman, philosopher, lawyer?" etc., etc., this internal evidence would be, indeed, invaluable. But it is not. The question is not _what_, but _who_, was the author. Was his family name "Shakespeare," and was he christened "William"? The Shakespearean has been allowed to confound these questions, and to answer them together, until they have become as inseparable as Demosthenes and his pebble-stones. But, once separated, it is manifest that the internal evidence drawn from the works themselves, however satisfactory as to the one question, is utterly incompetent as to the other, and that it is by purely external--that is to say, by circumstantial evidence, by history, and by the record--that the question before us must be answered, if, indeed, it ever is to be answered at all. And, therefore, it is by circumstantial evidence alone, we think, that literary imposture can be satisfactorily exposed. Neither can we trust to internal evidence alone; for an attempt to write the biography of William Shakespeare by means of the internal evidence of the Shakespearean plays, has inevitably resulted in the questions we have already encountered. Was Shakespeare a lawyer, was Shakespeare a physician--a natural philosopher--a chemist--a botanist--a classical scholar--a student of contemporary life and manners--an historian--a courtier--an aristocrat--a biblicist--a journeyman printer, and the rest!--and in giving us the fairy stories of Mr. Knight and Mr. De Quincy in place of the truth we crave. For we can not close our eyes to the fact that history very decid{297}edly negatives the idea that William Shakespeare, of Stratford, was either a lawyer, a physician, a courtier, a philosopher, an aristocrat, or a soldier. Moreover, while the internal evidence is fatal to the Shakespearean theory, it preponderates in favor of the Baconians: for, when we should ask these questions concerning Francis Bacon, surely the answer of history would be, Yes--yes, indeed; all this was Francis Bacon. The minute induction of his new and vast philosophy did not neglect the analysis of the meanest herb or the humblest fragment of experimental truth that could minister to the comfort or the health of man. And where else, in the range of letters--except in the Shakespearean works, where kings and clowns alike take their figures of speech from the analogies of nature--is the parallel of all this faithful accumulation of detail and