trustworthy guide, I have silently corrected the misquotation or readily repaired the error.  To the successive and representative heroes of the undying Dunciad I have left and will always leave the foul use of their own foul weapons.  I have spoken freely and fearlessly, and so shall on all occasions continue to speak, of what I find to be worthy of praise or dispraise, contempt or honour, in the public works and actions of men.  Here ends and here has always ended in literary matters the proper province of a gentleman; beyond it, though sometimes intruded on in time past by trespassers of a nobler race, begins the proper province of a blackguard.

REPORT ON THE PROCEEDINGS ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY SESSION OF THE NEWEST SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY.

A paper was read by Mr. A. on the disputed authorship of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  He was decidedly of opinion that this play was to be ascribed to George Chapman.  He based this opinion principally on the ground of style.  From its similarity of subject he had at first been disposed to assign it to Cyril Tourneur, author of The Revenger’s Tragedy; and he had drawn up in support of this theory a series of parallel passages extracted from the speeches of Vindice in that drama and of Oberon in the present play.  He pointed out however that the character of Puck could hardly have been the work of any English poet but the author of Bussy d’Ambois.  There was here likewise that gravity and condensation of thought conveyed through the medium of the “full and heightened style” commended by Webster, and that preponderance of philosophic or political discourse over poetic interest and dramatic action for which the author in question had been justly censured.

Some of the audience appearing slightly startled by this remark (indeed it afterwards appeared that the Chairman had been on the point of asking the learned member whether he was not thinking rather of Love’s Labour’s Lost?), Mr. A. cited the well-known scene in which Oberon discourses with Puck on matters concerning Mary Stuart and Queen Elizabeth, instead of despatching him at once on his immediate errand.  This was universally accepted as proof positive, and the reading concluded amid signs of unanimous assent, when

Mr. B. had nothing to urge against the argument they had just heard, but he must remind them that there was a more weighty kind of evidence than that adduced by Mr. A.; and to this he doubted not they would all defer.  He could prove by a tabulated statement that the words “to” and “from” occurred on an average from seven to nine times in every play of Chapman; whereas in the play under consideration the word “to” occurred exactly twelve times and the word “from” precisely ten.  He was therefore of opinion that the authorship should in all probability be assigned to Anthony Munday.