n truth very little short of an argument for
the plaintiffs, _i.e._, the Baconians.'

Why any man, judge or no judge, who wished to prepare an argument on
one side of a question should think fit to cast that argument for
convenience' sake in the form of a judicial summing-up of both sides
is, and must remain, a puzzle.

Judge Willis, who is a Shakespearean, bold and unabashed, is not
content with a mere summing-up, but, with a gravity and wealth of
detail worthy of De Foe, has presented us with what purports to be a
verbatim report of so much of the proceedings in a suit of Hall _v._
Russell as were concerned with the trial before a jury of the simple
issue--whether William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon, 'the
testator in the cause of _Hall v. Russell_,' was the author of the
plays in the Folio of 1623. We are favoured with the names of counsel
employed, who snarl at one another with such startling verisimilitude,
whilst the remarks that fall from the bench do so with such
naturalness, that it is perhaps not surprising, or any very severe
reflection upon his literary _esprit_, that a member of the Bar,
having heard Judge Willis deliver his lecture in the Inner Temple
Hall, repaired next day to the library to study at his leisure the
hitherto unnoted case of _Hall v. Russell_. Ten witnesses are put in
the box to prove the affirmative--that Shakespeare was the author of
the plays. Mr. Blount and M. Jaggard, the publishers of the Folio,
give a most satisfactory account of the somewhat crucial point--how
they came by the manuscripts, with all the amendments and corrections,
and pass lightly over the fact that those manuscripts had disappeared.
'Rare Ben Jonson' in the witness-box is a masterpiece of dramatic
invention; he demolishes Bacon's advocate with magnificent vitality.
John Selden makes a stately witness, and Francis Meres a very useful
one. Generally speaking, the weakest part in these interesting
proceedings is the cross-examination. I have heard the learned judge
do better in old days. No witnesses are called for the Baconians,
though all the writings of the great philosopher were put in for what
they were worth. The Lord Chief Justice, who seems to have been a
friend of Shakespeare's, sums up dead in his favour, and the jury
(with whose names we are not supplied, which is a pity--Bunyan or De
Foe would have given them to us), after a short absence, a quarter of
an hour, return a Shakespearean verdict, whic