the twin stars of Miss Delia Bacon and Mr. Smith arose. The evidence
of Ben Jonson and the rest can only prove that professed playwrights
and actors, who knew Will both on and off the stage, saw nothing in
him not compatible with his work. Had he been the kind of letterless
country fellow, or bookless fellow whom the Baconians and Mr.
Greenwood describe, the contemporary witnesses cited must have
detected Will in a day; and the story of the "Concealed Poet" who
really, at first, did the additions and changes in the Company's
older manuscript plays, and of the inconceivably impudent pretences
of Will of Stratford, would have kept the town merry for a month.
Five or six threadbare scholars would have sat down at a long table
in a tavern room, and, after their manner, dashed off a Comedy of
Errors on the real and the false playwright.

Baconians never seem to think of the mechanical difficulties in their
assumed literary hoax. If Will, like the old Hermit of Prague who
never saw pen and ink, could not even write, the hoax was a physical
impossibility. If he could write, but was a rough bookless man, his
condition would be scarcely the more gracious, even if he were able
to copy in his scrawl the fine Roman hand of the concealed poet. I
am surprised that the Baconians have never made that point. Will's
"copy" was almost without blot or erasion, the other actors were wont
to boast. Really the absence of erasions and corrections is too
easily explained on the theory that Will was NOT the author. Will
merely copied the fair copies handed to him by the concealed poet.
The farce was played for some twenty years, and was either undetected
or all concerned kept the dread secret--and all the other companies
and rival authors were concerned in exposing the imposture.

The whole story is like the dream of a child. We therefore expect