Again: 

It would have killed a salamander.

Compare the First Part of King Henry IV, Act iii.  Scene 3.

I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two
and thirty years.

In Act ii.  Scene 2 the hero, on being informed how heavy are the odds against him in the field, answers,

I am glad on’t; the honour is the greater.

To which his confidant rejoins: 

The danger is the greater.

And in the sixth scene of the same act the messenger observes: 

         I only heard the prince wish
   . . . . . . . 
   He had fewer by a thousand men.

Could any member doubt that we had here the same hand which gave us the like debate between King Henry and Westmoreland on the eve of Agincourt? or could any member suppose that in the subsequent remark of the same military confidant, “I smell a rat, sir,” there was merely a fortuitous coincidence with Hamlet’s reflection as he “whips out his rapier”—­in itself a martial proceeding—­under similar circumstances to the same effect?

In the very next scene a captain observes of his own troops

   Methinks such tattered rogues should never conquer: 

a touch that could only be due to the pencil which had drawn Falstaff’s ragged regiment.  In both cases, moreover, it was to be noted that the tattered rogues proved ultimately victorious.  But he had—­they might hardly believe it, but so it was—­even yet stronger and more convincing evidence to offer.  It would be remembered that a play called The Double Falsehood, formerly attributed to Shakespeare on the authority of Theobald, was now generally supposed to have been in its original form the work of Shirley.  What, then, he would ask, could be more natural or more probable than that a play formerly ascribed to Shirley should prove to be the genuine work of Shakespeare?  Common sense, common reason, common logic, all alike and all equally combined to enforce upon every candid judgment this inevitable conclusion.  This, however, was nothing in comparison to the final proof which he had yet to lay before them.  He need not remind them that in the opinion of their illustrious German teachers, the first men to discover and reveal to his unworthy countrymen the very existence of the new Shakespeare, the authenticity of any play ascribed to the possibly too prolific pen of that poet was invariably to be determined in the last resort by consideration of its demerits.  No English critic, therefore, who felt himself worthy to have been born a German, would venture to question the postulate on which all sound principles of criticism with regard to this subject must infallibly be founded:  that, given any play of unknown or doubtful authorship, the worse it was, the likelier was it to be Shakespeare’s. (This proposition was received with every sign of unanimous