The Baconian creed, of course, is scouted equally by special
students of Bacon, special students of Shakespeare, and by almost
all persons who devote themselves to sound literature. It is
equally rejected by Mr. Spedding, the chief authority on Bacon; by
Mr. H. H. Furness, the learned and witty American editor of the
'Variorum Shakespeare;' by Dr. Brandes, the Danish biographer and
critic; by Mr. Swinburne, with his rare knowledge of Elizabethan
and, indeed, of all literature; and by Mr. Sidney Lee, Shakespeare's
latest biographer. Therefore, the first point which strikes us in
the Baconian hypothesis is that its devotees are nobly careless of
authority. We do not dream of converting them, but it may be
amusing to examine the kind of logic and the sort of erudition which
go to support an hypothesis not freely welcomed even in Germany.

The mother of the Baconian theory (though others had touched a guess
at it) was undeniably Miss Delia Bacon, born at Tallmadge, Ohio, in
1811. Miss Bacon used to lecture on Roman history, illustrating her
theme by recitations from Macaulay's 'Lays.' 'Her very heart was
lacerated,' says Mr. Donnelly, 'and her womanly pride wounded, by a
creature in the shape of a man--a Reverend (!) Alexander
MacWhorter.' This Celtic divine was twenty-five, Miss Bacon was
thirty-five; there arose a misunderstanding; but Miss Bacon had
developed her Baconian theory before she knew Mr. MacWhorter. 'She
became a monomaniac on the subject,' writes Mr. Wyman, and 'after
the publication and non-success of her book she lost her reason
WHOLLY AND ENTIRELY.' But great wits jump, and, just as Mr. Darwin
and Mr. Wallace simultaneously evolved the idea of Natural
Selection, so, unconscious of Miss Delia, Mr. William Henry Smith
developed the Baconian verity.