was not borrowed from the original novel on which the play was founded; the inference was obvious, that without some personal allusion it must have been as unintelligib1e to the audience as it had hitherto been to the commentators.  His conjecture was confirmed, and the whole subject illustrated with a new light, by the well-known line in one of the Sonnets, in which the poet describes himself as “made lame by Fortune’s dearest spite”:  a line of which the inner meaning and personal application had also by a remarkable chance been reserved for him (Mr. E.) to discover.  There could be no doubt that we had here a clue to the origin of the physical infirmity referred to; an accident which must have befallen Shakespeare in early life while acting at the Fortune theatre, and consequently before his connection with a rival company; a fact of grave importance till now unverified.  The epithet “dearest,” like so much else in the Sonnets, was evidently susceptible of a double interpretation.  The first and most natural explanation of the term would at once suggest itself; the playhouse would of necessity be dearest to the actor dependent on it for subsistence, as the means of getting his bread; but he thought it not unreasonable to infer from this unmistakable allusion that the entrance fee charged at the Fortune may probably have been higher than the price of seats in any other house.  Whether or not this fact, taken in conjunction with the accident already mentioned, should be assumed as the immediate cause of Shakespeare’s subsequent change of service, he was not prepared to pronounce with such positive confidence as they might naturally expect from a member of the Society; but he would take upon himself to affirm that his main thesis was now and for ever established on the most irrefragable evidence, and that no assailant could by any possibility dislodge by so much as a hair’s breadth the least fragment of a single brick in the impregnable structure of proof raised by the argument to which they had just listened.

This demonstration being thus satisfactorily concluded, Mr. F. proceeded to read his paper on the date of Othello, and on the various parts of that play respectively assignable to Samuel Rowley, to George Wilkins, and to Robert Daborne.  It was evident that the story of Othello and Desdemona was originally quite distinct from that part of the play in which Iago was a leading figure.  This he was prepared to show at some length by means of the weak-ending test, the light-ending test, the double-ending test, the triple-ending test, the heavy-monosyllabic-eleventh-syllable-of-the-double-ending test, the run-on-line test, and the central-pause test.  Of the partnership of other poets in the play he was able to adduce a simpler but not less cogent proof.  A member of their Committee said to an objector lately:  “To me, there are the handwritings of four different men, the thoughts and powers of four different men, in the play.  If you can’t see them now, you must wait till, by study, you can.  I can’t give you eyes.”  To this argument he (Mr. F.) felt that it would be an insult to their understandings if he should attempt to add another word.  Still, for those who were willing to try and learn, and educate their ears and eyes, he had prepared six tabulated statements—­