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One curious instance of this self-oblivious immersion in the creations of his mind occurs to me. In one of his early poems called "In a Gondola"--as it first appeared--two lovers are happily conversing, until in a moment, we know not why, the tone becomes one of despair, and they bid each other an eternal farewell. Why this change of tone there is no explanation. In a later edition he condescends to inform us, inserting a note to this effect: "He is surprised and stabbed." This is the opposite extreme to Milton's angels carefully explaining to each other that they possess a specific levity which enables them to drop upward.

If we think of our own poets whose names are usually connected,--Longfellow and Lowell, for instance,--we shall easily see which is dramatic and which lyric. But the only man of truly dramatic faculty whom we have possessed was one in whom the quality never fully ripened,--I mean Edgar Allan Poe.

In foreign literature we may trace the same tendency of men of genius to arrange themselves in couplets. Take, for instance, in Italy, Dante and Petrarch; in France, Voltaire and Rousseau; in Germany, Goethe and Schiller. Dante is dramatic, losing himself in his stern subject, his dramatic characters; his awful pictures of gloomy destiny. Petrarch is lyrical, personal, singing forever his own sad and sweet fate. Again, Voltaire is essentially dramatic,--immersed in things, absorbed in life, a man reveling in all human accident and adventure, and aglow with faith in an earthly paradise. The sad Rousseau goes apart, away from men; standing like Byron, among them, but not of them; in a cloud of thoughts that are not their thoughts. And, once more, though Goethe resembles Shakespeare in this, that some of his works are subjective, and others objective,--though, in the greatness of his mind he reconciles all the usual antagonisms of thought,--yet the fully developed Goethe, like the fully developed Shakespeare, disappears in his characters and theme. Life to him, in all its forms, was so intensely interesting that his own individual and subjective sentiments are left out of sight. But Schiller stands opposed to Goethe, as being a dramatist devoid of dramatic genius, but full of personal power; so grand in his nobleness of soul, so majestic in the aspirations of his sentiment, so full of patriotic ardor and devotion to truth and goodness, that he moves all hearts as he walks through his dramas,--the great poet visible in every scene and every line. As his tried and noble friend says of him in an equally undying strain:--

Goethe's characters and stories covered the widest range: Faust, made sick with too much thought, and seeking outward joy as a relief; Werther, a self-absorbed sentimentalist; Tasso, an Italian man of genius, a mixture of imagination, aspiration, sensitive self-distrust; susceptible to opinion, sympathetic; Iphigenia, a picture of antique calm, simplicity, purity, classic repose, like that of a statue; Hermann and Dorothea, a sweet idyl of modern life, in a simple-minded German village with an opinionated, honest landlord, a talkative apothecary, a motherly landlady, a sensible and good pastor, and the two young lovers.

This law of duality, or reaction of genius on genius, will also be found to apply to artists, philosophers, historians, orators. These also come in pairs, manifesting the same antagonistic qualities.

Some artists are lyric; putting their own souls into every face, every figure, making even a landscape alive with their own mood; adding--

"A gleam Of lustre known to neither sea nor land But borrowed from the poet-painter's dream."

In every landscape of Claude we find the soul of Claude; in every rugged rock-defile of Salvator we read his mood. These artists are lyric; but there are also great dramatic painters, who give you, not themselves, but men and women; so real, so differentiated, characters so full of the variety and antagonism of nature, that the whole life of a period springs into being at their touch.

Take for instance two names, which always go together, standing side by side at the summit of Italian art,--Michael Angelo and Raphael. Though Raphael was a genius of boundless exuberance, and poured on the wall and canvas a flood of forms, creating as nature creates, without pause or self-repetition, yet there is a tone in all which irresistibly speaks of the artist's own soul. He created a world of Raphaels. Grace, sweetness, and tenderness went into all his work. Every line has the same characteristic qualities.

Turn to the frescoes by Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel. As we look up at those mighty forms--prophets, sibyls, seers, with multitudes of subordinate figures--we gradually trace in each prophet, king, or bard an individual character. Each one is himself. How fully each face and attitude is differentiated by some inward life. How each--David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, the Persian and the Libyan sibyl--stands out, distinct, filled with a power or a tenderness all his own. Michael Angelo himself is not there, except as a fountain of creative life, from whose genius all these majestic persons come forth as living realities.

Hanging on my walls are the well-known engravings of Guido's Aurora and Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. One of these is purely lyrical; the other as clearly dramatic.

The Aurora is so exquisitely lovely, the forms so full of grace, the movement of all the figures so rapid yet so firm, that I can never pass it without stopping to enjoy its charms. But variety is absent. The hours are lovely sisters, as Ovid describes sisters:--

"Facies non omnibus una, Nec diversa tamen, qualis decet esse sororum."

But when we turn to the Last Supper, we see the dramatic artist at his best. The subject is such as almost to compel a monotonous treatment, but there is a wonderful variety in the attitudes and grouping. Each apostle shows by his attitude, gesture, expression, that he is affected differently from all the others. Even the feet under the table speak. Stand before the picture; put yourself into the attitude of each apostle, and you will immediately understand his state of mind.

The mediaeval religious artists were subjective, sentimental, lyrical. In a scene like the crucifixion, all the characters, whether apostles, Roman soldiers, or Jewish Pharisees, hang their heads like bulrushes.

But see how Rubens, that great dramatic painter, represents the scene. The Magdalen, wild with grief, with disheveled hair, has thrown herself at the foot of the cross, clasping and kissing the feet of Jesus. On the other faces are terror, dismay, doubt, unbelief, mockery, curiosity, triumph, despair,--according to each person's character and attitude toward the event. Meantime the Roman centurion, seated on his splendid horse, is deliberately and carefully striking his spear into the side of the sufferer. His face expresses only that he has a duty to perform and means to fulfill it perfectly.

As Rubens is greatly dramatic, his pupil and follower, Vandyke, is a great lyrical artist, whose noble aspiration and generous sentiment shows itself in all his work.

The school of Venice, with Titian and Tintoretto at its head, is grandly dramatic and objective. The school of Florence, with Guido and Domenichino at its head, eminently lyrical and subjective.

If we had time, we might show that the two masters of Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle, are, the one lyrical, and intensely subjective, platonizing the universe; and the other as evidently objective, immersed in the study of things; rejoicing in their variety, their individuality, their persistence of type.

The two masters of Greek history, Herodotus and Thucydides, stand opposed to each other in the same way. Herodotus is the story-teller, the dramatic raconteur, whose charming tales are as entertaining as the "Arabian Nights." Thucydides is the personal historian who puts himself into his story, and determines its meaning and moral according to his own theories and convictions.

We have another example in Livy and Tacitus.

The two great American orators most frequently mentioned together are Webster and Clay. Though you would smile if I were to call either of them a lyric or a dramatic speaker, yet the essential distinction we have been considering may be clearly seen in them. Clay's inspiration was personal, his influence, personal influence. His theme was nothing; his treatment of it everything. But Webster rose or fell with the magnitude and importance of the occasion and argument. When on the wrong side, he failed, for his intellect would not work well except in the service of reality and truth. But Clay was perhaps greatest when arguing against all facts and all reason. Then he summoned all his powers,--wit, illustration, analogy, syllogisms, appeals to feeling, prejudice, and passion; and so swept along his confused and blinded audience to his conclusions.

I think that subjective writers are loved more than dramatic. We admire the one and we love the other. We admire Shakespeare and love Milton; we admire Chaucer and love Spenser; we admire Dante and love Petrarch; we admire Goethe and love Schiller; and if Byron had not been so selfish a man, we should have loved him too. We admire Michael Angelo and love Raphael; we admire Rubens and love Vandyke; we admire Robert Browning and love Mrs. Browning. In short, we care more for the man who gives us himself than for the man who gives us the whole outside world.

I have been able to give you only a few hints of this curious distinction in art and literature. But if we carry it in our mind, we shall find it a key by which many doors may be unlocked. It will enable us to classify authors, and understand them better.

DUALISM IN NATIONAL LIFE

The science of comparative ethnology is one which has been greatly developed during the last twenty-five years. The persistence of race tendencies, as in the Semitic tribes, Jews and Arabs, or in the Teutonic and Celtic branches of the great Aryan stock, has been generally admitted. Though few would now say, with the ethnologist Knox, "Race is everything," none would wholly dispense with this factor, as Buckle did, in writing a history of civilization.

Racial varieties have existed from prehistoric times. Their origin is lost in the remote past. As far as history goes back, we find them the same that they are now. When and how the primitive stock differentiated itself into the great varieties which we call Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian, no one can tell. But there are well-established varieties of which we can trace the rise and development; I mean national varieties. The character of an Englishman or a Frenchman is as distinctly marked as that of a Greek or Roman. There is a general resemblance among all Englishmen; and the same kind of resemblance among all Frenchmen, Spaniards, Swedes, Poles. But this crystallization into national types of character has taken place in a comparatively short period. We look back to a time when there were no Englishmen in Great Britain; but only Danes, Saxons, Normans, and Celts; no Frenchmen in France; but Gauls, Franks, and Romans. Gradually a distinct quality emerges, and we have Frenchmen, Italians, Englishmen. The type, once arrived at, persists, and becomes more marked. It is marked by personal looks and manners, by a common temperament, a common style of thinking, feeling, acting; the same kind of morals and manners. This type was formed by the action and reaction of the divers races brought side by side--Normans and Saxons mutually influencing each other in England, and being influenced again by climate, conditions of life, forms of government, national customs. So, at last, we have the well-developed national character,--a mysterious but very certain element, from which no individual can wholly escape. All drink of that one spirit.

Thus far I have been stating what we all know. But now I would call your attention to a curious fact, which, so far as I am aware, has not before been noticed. It is this,--that when two nations, during their forming period, have been in relation to each other, there will be a peculiar character developed in each. That is to say, they will differ from each other according to certain well-defined lines, and these differences will repeat themselves again and again in history, in curious parallelisms, or dualisms.

To take the most familiar illustration of this: consider the national qualities of the French and English. The English and French, during several centuries, have been acting and reacting on each other, both in war and peace. Now, what are the typical characteristics of these two nations? Stated in a broad way they might be described something as follows:--

The English mind is more practical than ideal; its movement is slow but persistent; its progress is by gradual development; it excels in the industrial arts; it reverences power; it loves liberty more than equality, not objecting to an aristocracy. It tends to individualism. Its conquests have been due to the power of order, and adherence to law.

The French mind is more ideal than practical; versatile, rather than persistent; its movements rapid, its progress by crises and revolution, rather than by development; it excels in whatever is tasteful and artistic; it admires glory rather than power; loves equality more than liberty; objects to an aristocracy, but is ready to yield individual rights at the bidding of the community; renouncing individualism for the sake of communism; and its successes have been due to enthusiasm rather than to organization.

Next, look at the Greeks and Romans. These peoples were in intimate relations during the forming period of national life; and we find in them much the same contrasts of character that we do in the English and the French. The Romans were deficient in imagination, rather prosaic, fond of rule and fixed methods, conservative of ancient customs. The Greeks were quick and versatile; artistic to a high degree; producing masterpieces of architecture, painting, statuary, and creating every form of literature; inventing the drama, the epic poem, oratory, odes, history, philosophy. The Romans borrowed from them their art and their literature, but were themselves the creators of law, the organizers of force. The Greeks and Romans were the English and French of antiquity; and you will notice that they occupy geographically the same relative positions,--the Greeks and French on the east; the Romans and English on the west.

But now observe another curious fact. The Roman Empire and the Greek republics came to an end; and in Greece no important nationality took the place of those wonderful commonwealths. But in Italy, by the union of the old inhabitants with the Teutonic northern invaders, modern Italy was slowly formed into a new national life. No longer deriving any important influence from Greece , Italy, during the Middle Ages, came into relations with Spain and the Spaniards. In Spain, as in Italy, a new national life was in process of formation by the union of the Gothic tribes, the Mohammedan invaders, and the ancient inhabitants. The Spaniards occupied Sicily in 1282, and Naples fell later into their hands, about 1420, and in 1526 took possession of Milan. Thus Italy and Spain were entangled in complex relations during their forming period. What was the final result? Modern Italians became the very opposite of the ancient Romans. The Spaniards on the west are now the Romans, and the Italians, the Greeks. The Spaniards are slow, strong, conservative; the Italians, quick-witted, full of feeling and sentiment, versatile. The Spaniards trust to organization, the Italians to enthusiasm. The Spaniards are practical, the Italians ideal. In fine, the Spaniards, on the west, are like the English and the ancient Romans; the Italians, on the east, like the French and the Greeks. The English pride, the Roman pride, the Spanish pride, we have all heard of; but the French, the Greeks, and the Italians are not so much inclined to pride and the love of power, as to vanity and the love of fame. England, Rome, and Spain, united by law and the love of organization, gradually became solidified into empires; Greece, Italy, and France were always divided into independent states, provinces, or republics.

Now, let us go east and consider two empires that have grown up, side by side, with constant mutual relations: Japan and China. The people of Japan, on the east, are described by all travelers in language that might be applied to the ancient Greeks or the modern French. They are said to be quick-witted, lively, volatile, ready of apprehension, with a keen sense of honor, which prefers death to disgrace; eminently a social and pleasure-seeking people, fond of feasts, dancing, music, and frolics. Men and women are pleasing, polite, affable. On the other hand, the Chinese are described as more given to reason than to sentiment, prosaic, slow to acquire, but tenacious of all that is gained, very conservative, great lovers of law and order; with little taste for art, but much national pride. They are the English of Asia; the Japanese, the French.

Go back to earlier times, when the two oldest branches of the great Aryan stock diverged on the table-lands of central Asia; the Vedic race descending into India, and the Zend people passing west, into Persia. The same duplex development took place that we have seen in other instances. The people on the Indus became what they still are,--a people of sentiment and feeling. Like the French, they are polite, and cultivate civility and courtesy. The same tendency to local administration which we see in France is found in India; the commune being, in both, the germ-cell of national life. The village communities in India are little republics, almost independent of anything outside. Dynasties change, new rulers and kings arrive; Hindoo, Mohammedan, English; but the village community remains the same. Like the Japanese, the French, the Italians, the inhabitants of India are skillful manufacturers of ornamental articles. Their religion tends to sentiment more than to morality,--to feeling, rather than to action. This is the development which India took when these races inhabited the Punjaub. But the ancient Persians were different. Their religion included a morality which placed its essence in right thinking and right action. A sentimental religion, like that of India and of Italy, tends to the adoration of saints and holy images and to multiplied ceremonies. A moral religion, like that of Persia, of Judea, and of the Teutonic races, tends to the adoration and service of the unseen. The Hindoos had innumerable gods, temples, idols. The Persians worshiped the sacred fire, without temple, priest, altar, sacrifice, or ritual. The ancient Persians, wholly unlike the modern Persians, were a people of action, energy, enterprise. But when the old Persian empire fell, the character of the people changed. Just as in Italy the old Roman type disappeared, and was replaced by the opposite in the modern Italian, so modern Persia has swung round to the opposite pole of national character. The Persians and Turks, both professing the Mohammedan religion, belong to different sects of that faith. The Turks are proud, tenacious of old customs, grave in their demeanor, generally just in their dealings, keeping their word. The Persians, as they appear in the works of Malcolm and Monier, are changeable, kindly, polite, given to ceremonies, fond of poetry, with taste for fine art and decoration,--a mobile people. The Turk is silent, the Persian talkative. The Turk is proud and cold, the Persian affable and full of sentiment. In short, the Persian is the Frenchman, and the Turk the Englishman. And here again, as in the other cases, the French type of nationality unfolds itself on the east, and the English on the west.

These national doubles have not been exhausted. We have other instances of twin nations, born of much the same confluence of race elements, of whom, as of Esau and Jacob, it might be predicted to the mother race, "Two nations shall be born of thee; two kinds of people shall go forth from thee; and the one shall be stronger than the other." Thus there are the twin races which inhabit Sweden and Norway; the Swedes, on the east, are more intelligent, quick-witted, and versatile; the Norwegians, on the west, slow, persistent, and disposed to foreign conquest and adventure, as shown in the sea-kings, who discovered Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland; and the modern emigrants who reap the vast wheatfields of Minnesota. So, too, we might speak of the Poles and Germans. The Polish nation, on the east, resembling the French; the German, on the west, the English.

But time will not allow me to carry out these parallels into details. The question is, are these mere coincidences, or do they belong to the homologons of history, where the same law of progress repeats itself under different conditions, as the skeleton of the mammal is found in the whale. Such curious homologons we find in national events, and they can hardly be explained as accidental coincidences. For instance, the English and French revolutions proceeded by six identical steps. First, an insurrection of the people. Secondly, the dethronement and execution of the king. Thirdly, a military usurper. Fourthly, the old line restored. Fifthly, after the death of the restored king, his brother succeeds to the throne. Sixthly, a second revolution drives the brother into exile, and a constitutional king of a collateral branch takes his place.

But if these doubles which I have described come by some mysterious law of polar force, as in the magnet, where the two kinds of electricity are repelled to opposite poles, and yet attract each other, how account for the regularity of the geographical position? Why is the French, Greek, Hindoo, Persian, Italian, Polish, Swedish type always at the east, and the English, Roman, Iranic, Ottoman, Spanish, German, Norwegian type always at the west? Are nations, like tides, affected by the diurnal revolution of the globe? This, I confess, I am unable to explain; and I leave it to others to consider whether what I have described is pure coincidence, or if it belongs in some way to the philosophy of history and comes under universal law.

DID SHAKESPEARE WRITE BACON'S WORKS

The greatest of English poets is Shakespeare. The greatest prose writer in English literature is probably Bacon. Each of these writers, alone, is a marvel of intellectual grandeur. It is hard to understand how one man, in a few years, could have written all the masterpieces of Shakespeare,--thirty-six dramas, each a work of genius such as the world will never let die. It is a marvel that from one mind could proceed the tender charm of such poems as "Romeo and Juliet," "As You Like It," or "The Winter's Tale;" the wild romance of "The Tempest," or of "A Midsummer Night's Dream;" the awful tragedies of "Lear," "Macbeth," and "Othello;" the profound philosophy of "Hamlet;" the perfect fun of "Twelfth Night," and "The Merry Wives of Windsor;" and the reproductions of Roman and English history. It is another marvel that a man like Bacon, immersed nearly all his life in business, a successful lawyer, an ambitious statesman, a courtier cultivating the society of the sovereign and the favorites of the sovereign, should also be the founder of a new system of philosophy, which has been the source of many inventions and new sciences down to the present day; should have critically surveyed the whole domain of knowledge, and become a master of English literary style. Each of these phenomena is a marvel; but put them together, and assume that one man did it all, and you have, not a marvel, but a miracle. Yet, this is the result which the monistic tendency of modern thought has reached. Several critics of our time have attempted to show that Bacon, besides writing all the works usually attributed to him, was also the author of all of Shakespeare's plays and poems.

This theory was first publicly maintained by Miss Delia Bacon in 1857. It had been, before, in 1856, asserted by an Englishman, William Henry Smith, but only in a small volume printed for private circulation. This book made a distinguished convert in the person of Lord Palmerston, who openly declared his conviction that Bacon was the author of Shakespeare's plays. Two papers by Appleton Morgan, written in the same sense, appeared last year in "Appletons' Journal." But far the most elaborate and masterly work in support of this attempt to dethrone Shakespeare, and to give his seat on the summit of Parnassus to Lord Bacon, is the book by Judge Holmes, published in 1866. He has shown much ability, and brought forward every argument which has any plausibility connected with it.

Judge Holmes was, of course, obliged to admit the extreme antecedent improbability of his position. Certainly it is very difficult to believe that the author of such immortal works should have been willing, for any reason, permanently to conceal his authorship; or, if he could hide that fact, should have been willing to give the authorship to another; or, if willing, should have been able so effectually to conceal the substitution as to blind the eyes of all mankind down to the days of Miss Delia Bacon and Judge Holmes.

These arguments have all been answered, and the world still believes in Shakespeare as before. But I have thought it might be interesting to show how easily another argument could be made of an exactly opposite kind,--how easily all these proofs might be reversed. I am inclined to think that if we are to believe that one man was the author both of the plays and of the philosophy, it is much more probable that Shakespeare wrote the works of Bacon than that Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare. For there is no evidence that Bacon was a poet as well as a philosopher; but there is ample evidence that Shakespeare was a philosopher as well as a poet. This, no doubt, assumes that Shakespeare actually wrote the plays; but this we have a right to assume, in the outset of the discussion, in order to stand on an equal ground with our opponents.

The Bacon vs. Shakespeare argument runs thus: "Assuming that Lord Bacon wrote the works commonly attributed to him, there is reason to believe that he also wrote the plays and poems commonly attributed to Shakespeare."

The counter argument would then be: "Assuming that Shakespeare wrote the plays, and poems commonly attributed to him, there is reason to believe that he also wrote the works commonly attributed to Bacon."

This is clearly the fair basis of the discussion. What is assumed on the one side on behalf of Bacon we have a right to assume on the other on behalf of Shakespeare. But before proceeding on this basis, I must reply to the only argument of Judge Holmes which has much apparent weight. He contends that it was impossible for Shakespeare, with the opportunities he possessed, to acquire the knowledge which we find in the plays. Genius, however great, cannot give the knowledge of medical and legal terms, nor of the ancient languages. Now, it has been shown that the plays afford evidence of a great knowledge of law and medicine; and of works in Latin and Greek, French and Italian. How could such information have been obtained by a boy who had no advantages of study except at a country grammar school, which he left at the age of fourteen, who went to London at twenty-three and became an actor, and who spent most of his life as actor, theatrical proprietor, and man of business?

But Shakespeare had access to another source of knowledge besides the study of books. When he reached London, five or six play-houses were in full activity, and new plays were produced every year in vast numbers. New plays were then in constant demand, just as the new novel and new daily or weekly paper are called for now. The drama was the periodical literature of the time. Dramatic authors wrote with wonderful rapidity, borrowing their subjects from plays already on the stage, and from classic or recent history. Marlowe, Greene, Lyly, Peele, Kyd, Lodge, Nash, Chettle, Munday, Wilson, were all dramatic writers before Shakespeare. Philip Henslowe, a manager or proprietor of the theatres, bought two hundred and seventy plays in about ten years. Thomas Heywood wrote a part or the whole of two hundred and twenty plays during his dramatic career. Each acted play furnished material for some other. They were the property of the play-houses, not of the writers. One writer after another has accused Shakespeare of indifference to his reputation, because he did not publish a complete and revised edition of his works during his life. How could he do this, since they did not belong to him, but to the theatre? Yet every writer was at full liberty to make use of all he could remember of other plays, as he saw them acted; and Shakespeare was not slow to use this opportunity. No doubt he gained knowledge in this way, which he afterward employed much better than did the authors from whom he took it.

The first plays printed under Shakespeare's name did not appear till he had been connected with the stage eleven years. This gives time enough for him to have acquired all the knowledge to be found in his books. That he had read Latin and Greek books we are told by Ben Jonson; though that great scholar undervalued, as was natural, Shakespeare's attainments in those languages.

But Ben Jonson himself furnishes the best reply to those who think that Shakespeare could not have gained much knowledge of science or literature because he did not go to Oxford or Cambridge. What opportunities had Ben Jonson? A bricklayer by trade, called back immediately from his studies to use the trowel; then running away and enlisting as a common soldier; fighting in the Low Countries; coming home at nineteen, and going on the stage; sent to prison for fighting a duel--what opportunities for study had he? He was of a strong animal nature, combative, in perpetual quarrels, fond of drink, in pecuniary troubles, married at twenty, with a wife and children to support. Yet Jonson was celebrated for his learning. He was master of Greek and Latin literature. He took his characters from Athenaeus, Libanius, Philostratus. Somehow he had found time for all this study. "Greek and Latin thought," says Taine, "were incorporated with his own, and made a part of it. He knew alchemy, and was as familiar with alembics, retorts, crucibles, etc., as if he had passed his life in seeking the philosopher's stone. He seems to have had a specialty in every branch of knowledge. He had all the methods of Latin art,--possessed the brilliant conciseness of Seneca and Lucan." If Ben Jonson--a bricklayer, a soldier, a fighter, a drinker--could yet find time to acquire this vast knowledge, is there any reason why Shakespeare, with much more leisure, might not have done the like? He did not possess as much Greek and Latin lore as Ben Jonson, who, probably, had Shakespeare in his mind when he wrote the following passage in his "Poetaster:"

"His learning savors not the school-like gloss That most consists in echoing words and terms, And soonest wins a man an empty name; Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance Wrapt in the curious generalties of art-- But a direct and analytic sum Of all the worth and first effects of art. And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life, That it shall gather strength of life with being, And live hereafter more admired than now."

The only other serious proof offered in support of the proposition that Bacon wrote the immortal Shakespearean drama is that certain coincidences of thought and language are found in the works of the two writers. When we examine them, however, they seem very insignificant. Take, as an example, two or three, on which Judge Holmes relies, and which he thinks very striking.

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