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, which 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: