that ground; and on that ground alone the author is willing, and
deliberately prefers, for the present, to rest it.

'External evidence, of course, will not be wanting; there will be
enough and to spare, if the demonstration here be correct. But the
author of the discovery was not willing to rob the world of this great
question; but wished rather to share with it the benefit which the
true solution of the Problem offers--the solution prescribed by those
who propounded it to the future. It seemed better to save to the world
the power and beauty of this demonstration, its intellectual stimulus,
its demand on the judgment. It seemed better, that the world should
acquire it also in the form of criticism, instead of being stupified
and overpowered with the mere force of an irresistible, external,
historical proof. Persons incapable of appreciating any other kind of
proof,--those who are capable of nothing that does not 'directly fall
under and strike _the senses_' as Lord Bacon expresses it,--will have
their time also; but it was proposed to present the subject first to
minds of another order.'

In the present volume, accordingly, the author applies herself to the
demonstration and development of a system of philosophy, which has
presented itself to her as underlying the superficial and ostensible
text of Shakspere's plays. Traces of the same philosophy, too, she
conceives herself to have found in the acknowledged works of Lord
Bacon, and in those of other writers contemporary with him. All agree
in one system; all these traces indicate a common understanding and
unity of purpose in men among whom no brotherhood has hitherto been
suspected, except as representatives of a grand and brilliant age,
when the human intellect made a marked step in advance.