deathless works, he should make no sign, has, in fact, staggered
even the great credulity of Baconians. He MUST, they think, have
made a sign in cipher. Out of the mass of the plays, anagrams and
cryptograms can be fashioned a plaisir, and the world has heard too
much of Mrs. Gallup, while the hunt for hints in contemporary
frontispieces led to mistaking the porcupine of Sidney's crest for
'a hanged hog' (Bacon).

The theory of the Baconian authorship of Shakespeare's plays and
poems has its most notable and recent British advocate in His Honour
Judge Webb, sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, Regius
Professor of Laws, and Public Orator in the University of Dublin.
Judge Webb, as a scholar and a man used to weighing evidence, puts
the case at its strongest. His work, 'The Mystery of William
Shakespeare' (1902), rests much on the old argument about the
supposed ignorance of Shakespeare, and the supposed learning of the
author of the plays. Judge Webb, like his predecessors, does not
take into account the wide diffusion of a kind of classical and
pseudo-scientific knowledge among all Elizabethan writers, and bases
theories on manifest misconceptions of Shakespearean and other
texts. His book, however, has affected the opinions of some readers
who do not verify his references and examine the mass of Elizabethan
literature for themselves.

Judge Webb, in his 'Proem,' refers to Mr. Holmes and Mr. Donnelly as
'distinguished writers,' who 'have received but scant consideration
from the accredited organs of opinion on this side of the Atlantic.'
Their theories have not been more favourably considered by
Shakespearean scholars on the other side of the Atlantic, and how
much consideration they deserve we have tried to show. The Irish