h of course ought by
rights to make the whole question _res judicata_.

But it has done nothing of the kind. Could we really ask Blount and
Jaggard how they came by the manuscripts, and who made the
corrections, and did we believe their replies, why, then a stray
Baconian here and there might reluctantly abandon his strange fancy;
but as _Hall v. Russell_ is Judge Willis's joke, it will convert no
Baconians any more than Dean Sherlock's once celebrated _Trial of the
Witnesses_ compels belief in the Resurrection.

The question in reality is a compound one. Did Shakespeare write the
plays? If yes, the matter is at rest. If no--who did? If an author can
be found--Bacon or anyone else--well and good. If no author can be
found--Anon. wrote them--a conclusion which need terrify no one, since
the plays would still remain within our reach, and William
Shakespeare, apart from the plays, is very little to anybody who has
not written his life.

But this is not the form the controversy has assumed. The
anti-Shakespeareans are to a man Baconians, and fondly imagine that if
only Will Shakespeare were put out of the way their man must step into
the vacant throne. Lord Penzance in charging his jury told them that
those of their number 'who had studied the writings of Bacon' and were
'keenly alive to his marvellous mental powers' would probably have 'no
difficulty,' if once satisfied that the author they were seeking after
was _not_ Shakespeare, in finding as a fact that he _was_ Bacon. But
suppose James Spedding had been on that jury, and, rising in his
place, had spoken as follows:

'My Lord,--If any man has ever studied the writings of Bacon, I
have. For twenty-five years I have done little else. If any man is
keenly alive to his marvellous mental powers, I am that man. I am
also deeply read in the plays attributed to Shakespeare, and I
think I am in a condition to say that, whoever was the real author,
it was _not_ Bacon.'

That this is exactly what Spedding would have said we know from the
letter he wrote on the subject to Mr. Holmes, reprinted in _Essays
and Discussions_, and it completely upsets the whole scheme of
arrangement of Lord Penzance's summing-up, which proceeds on the easy
footing that the more difficulties you throw in Shakespeare's path the
smoother becomes Bacon's.

That there are difficulties in Shakespeare's path, some things very
hard to explain, must be admitted. Lord Penzance makes the