editors, commentators, and scholars--and this absurd
theory about Bacon, which was first broached a good many years ago,
never obtained credit for a moment with them; nor did they ever
entertain for an instant a doubt that the plays attributed to William
Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon were really written by him. Now I am
intimately acquainted and in frequent communication with William Donne,
Edward FitzGerald, and James Spedding, all thorough Shakespeare
scholars, and the latter a man who has just published a work upon Bacon,
which has been really the labour of his life; none of these men,
competent judges of the matter, ever mentions the question of "Who wrote
Shakespeare?" except as a ludicrous thing to be laughed at, and I think
they may be trusted to decide whether it is or is not so.

I have a slight feeling of disgust at the attack made thus on the
personality of my greatest mental benefactor; and consider the whole
thing a misapplication, not to say waste, of time and ingenuity that
might be better employed. As I regard the memory of Shakespeare with
love, veneration, and gratitude, and am proud and happy to be his
countrywoman, considering it among the privileges of my English birth, I
resent the endeavour to prove that he deserved none of these feelings,
but was a mere literary impostor. I wonder the question had any interest
for you, for I should not have supposed you imagined Shakespeare had not
written his own plays, Irish though you be. Do you remember the
servant's joke in the farce of "High Life Below Stairs" where the cook
asks, "Who wrote Shakespeare?" and one of the others answers, with, at
any rate, partial plausibility, "Oh! why, Colley Cibber, to be sure!"

FOOTNOTES:

[126] Sometimes one thinks her the wisest woman who ever lived. "Nothing
seems stranger than the delusions of other people _when they have ceased
to be our own_" suggests La Rochefoucauld and comes near to Solomon; but
whosoever may have anticipated or prompted her, he is not at the moment
within my memory. But she is often not wise at all: and even her good
wits are not always left unaffected by her bad temper. It is really
amusing to read Mrs. Carlyle's rather mischievous account of Mrs. Butler
(F. K.'s married name) calling and carrying a whip "to keep her hand
in": and _then_ to come on F. K.'s waspish resentment at these words,
when they were published.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
(1811-1863)

So much has be