D.Litt. of Oxford; better known to many as Mark Twain. Dr. Clemens
was, indeed, no mean literary critic; witness his epoch-making study
of Prof. Dowden's Life of Shelley, while his researches into the
biography of Jeanne d'Arc were most conscientious.

With the deepest respect for the political wisdom and literary taste
of Lord Palmerston, Prince Bismarck, Lord Beaconsfield, and the late
Mr. John Bright; and with every desire to humble myself before the
judicial verdicts of Judges Holmes, Webb, and Lord Penzance; with
sincere admiration of my late friend, Dr. Clemens, I cannot regard
them as, in the first place and professionally, trained students of
literary history.

They were no more specially trained students of Elizabethan
literature than myself; they were amateurs in this province, as I am
an amateur, who differ from all of them in opinion. Difference of
opinion concerning points of literary history ought not to make "our
angry passions rise." Yet this controversy has been extremely
bitter.

I abstain from quoting the "sweetmeats," in Captain MacTurk's phrase,
which have been exchanged by the combatants. Charges of ignorance
and monomania have been answered by charges of forgery, lying,
"scandalous literary dishonesty," and even inaccuracy. Now no mortal
is infallibly accurate, but we are all sane and "indifferent honest."
There have been forgeries in matters Shakespearean, alas, but not in
connection with the Baconian controversy.

It is an argument of the Baconians, and generally of the impugners of
good Will's authorship of the plays vulgarly attributed to him, that