chapter iv.

That a rustic butcher-lad should, while holding horses at the door of a city theater, produce as "the first heir of his invention"--the very first thing he turned his pen to--so maturely voluptuous a poem as the "Venus and Adonis," would be a miracle, among all the other miracles, not to be lost sight of.

We believe that historical and circumstantial evidence alone is adequate to settle or even to disturb this Shakespearean question; for it appears to be the unanimous verdict of criticism that the style of Bacon and the style of "Shakespeare" are as far apart as the poles. Experts have even gone so far as to reduce both to a "euphonic test," * and pronounce it impossible that the two could have been written by the same hand. But this is not very valuable as evidence; for never, we think, can mere expert evidence be of itself sufficient as to questions of forgery of authorship any more than of autograph. If mere literary style had been all the evidence accessible, our Shakespeareans would have been making oath to the Ireland forgeries to-day as stoutly as when, in the simplicity of their hearts, they swore the impromptus of a boy of eighteen surpassed any thing in "Hamlet" or Holy Writ. Even Mr. Spedding, who ignores any "Baconian Theory," in writing the life of Bacon, admits that whenever a literary doubt has to be decided by the test of style, "the reader must be allowed to judge for himself."

* Wilkes's "Shakespeare from an American point of view,"