The letter and pamphlet both in Greene’s handwriting would have been the best possible evidence of the genuineness of its contents and legibility. Chettle’s not offering in evidence the original letter is strong presumptive proof of the commission of a forgery. He, if not the chief actor in the offense, was an accessory after the fact, and should, in his appeal to the public in defense of his reputation, have brought forward the pamphlet itself, embracing the whole matter, for examination and comparison; for we feel satisfied that such an examination would prove that the celebrated letter was authored and in the handwriting of Robert Greene, and not so ill written that it could not be read by the printers, who must have been familiar with the handwriting of the largest contributor of the prose literature of his day. For ourselves, what we have adduced convinces us that the tract, “Groats Worth of Wit,” was authored and written by one of Philip Henslowe’s hacks, presumedly, Henry Chettle, a literary dead beat, and an indigent of many imprisonments, who was always importuning the old play-broker for money. Since the tract, “Groats Worth of Wit,” was in Chettle’s own handwriting, he strove to fool the printers by transcribing Greene’s letter and binding both together, through that “disguised hood” to fool the public. Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said, “You may fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.” It is possible that Chettle may have fooled some of the people of his own generation some of the time, but in later times, through the misapprehension of his quoted words, he has fooled the Shaksperolators all of the time. Chettle, however, would not permit the letter to come forward in its integrity and speak for itself, disclosing the nature of the intolerable something “stroke out,” which piques our curiosity, but not in anticipation of any of those indecencies that taint the writings of Ben Jonson and the work of many writers of that age, not excepting Shakespeare, who is also amenable in no slight degree to the charge of the same coarseness of taste which excites repulsion in the feelings of Leo Tolstoy. The fact of the whole matter appears to be that Henry Chettle, wishing to profit financially by the great commercial value of Robert Greene’s name, was accessory to the embezzlement and the commission of a forgery, and was the silent beneficiary of the fraud. The mutual connection of hack writer and pirate publisher is so obvious that a jury of discerning students, with the exhibits, presented together with the presumptive proofs and inferential evidence contextured in both letter and preface, should easily confirm our opinion of the incredibleness of Chettle’s statements contained in the preface to “Kind Hearts Dreams.” The evidence of their falsity is, _prima-facie_, destitute of credible attestations.