(2) With respect to the italics, it must suffice here to quote one instance of their inconsistent use. Proper names are as a rule italicised, but sometimes, when no rational explanation for the change suggests itself, they appear in Roman type. Perhaps the most remarkable instance is to be found on page 56 of the Histories (I. Henry IV.). There the name Francis' occurs five times in italics and sixteen times in Roman letters. (3) The irregularity in the use of brackets is well seen in comparing pages 70 and 71 and pages 72 and 73 of the Histories, in which occur respectively one and three bracketed words, with pages 74 and 75, immediately following, where there are eighty-six. For another example reference may be made to page 53 of the Comedies. The Merry Wives of Windsor is here in progress, the page containing the end of Act iii. and the beginning of Act iv. A study of this page will give a good idea of the curious use both of italics and of brackets. (4) Hyphenation is most irregular and unaccountable throughout the volume. For instance, in I. Henry IV., Act ii., Scene 1 (page 53 in the Folio), Gadshill is made to remark I am ioyned with no Foot-land-Rakers, no Long-staffe Again, in II. Henry IV., at the end of the Induction (page 74), we read From Rumours Tongues They bring smooth-Comforts-false, worse then True-wrongs. On pages 74 (a two-thirds page) and 75 occur twenty-one hyphens; on the two preceding them, 72 and 73 (a half page), are five. (This is reckoned excluding six that occur at the ends of the lines in prose diction on pages 72 and 73. There is no prose on 74 and 75.) How far the appearance of any of these is natural must be left to the judgment of each reader. Mr. Donnelly was also struck with the strange use of capital letters. This needs no illustration to any one who has ever studied one page of the Folio carefully. Mr. Donnelly was, however, particularly interested in this matter from noticing the fact that in all the four places where the word 'Bacon' occurs in the Plays it is found with a capital letter. It will be noticed that these four passages are all in close connection with scenes to which Mr. Donnelly's attention had been called through other peculiarities. Further research convinced him that in suspecting the capitals throughout the volume he had hit on a true light. • There are none of these antics in the corresponding passages in the Quartos. The references are: Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 1; 1. Henry IV. ii. 1; I. Henry IV. ii. 2 (twice—once in the composition ‘Bacon-fed '). For the use of capitals in Shakespeare cf. the remarks of Mr. Allan Park Paton in his (Hamnet) edition of Macbeth (Edinburgh, 1877). With a mind fully bent upon the discovery of a secret the existence of which he now considered proved, Mr. Donnelly commenced a series of laborious experiments in order to satisfy himself as to whether or not, and if so in what manner, the curious features which the Folio presents were connected with the cipher which he believed the Plays to contain. He writes to a correspondent in England I counted up all these peculiarities and set myself to consider how they could be used as factors in the problem. After some experiments I obtained the following results: I found that in many cases where some remarkable word, such as 'St. Albans' or 'Bacon,' is in the text, that word is reached by multiplying the number of the page at which the scene begins by the number of italic words in the first column of that page. For instance, on page 53 of the Histories (I. Henry IV.) there are seven italic words in the first column. 53x7=371. The 371st word is 'Bacon.' On page 67 (same play) the first column contains six words in italics. 67 x 6=402, and the 402nd word is St. Albans." These are two significant instances out of many given by Mr. Donnelly. 6 He seems to have found further encouragement in the fact that there are several individual pages in the volume in which more than one peculiarity of strong suggestiveness occurs, as though to attract the attention of the reader. Thus the page 53 just referred to contains, to start with, the strange hyphenation in Gadshill's speech, the word 'Bacon' with a capital letter, and Nicholas' twice. On the next page are found 'Exchequer' twice, 'Bacons,' and Bacon-fed,' and on page 52, in that portion of the page which is exactly opposite to Gadshill's speech on page 53, the words And now I will unclasp a secret book, Mr. Donnelly considered this simile forced. It may appear so or not to others, but Mr. Donnelly states that subsequent researches have convinced him that it was only introduced to bring in the word Speare,' the latter half of Shakespeare.' 6 6 Again, on page 53 of the Comedies, already referred to as illustrative of the irregular use of brackets and italics, the word 'Bacon' is found in a most irrelevant scene in a most irrelevant. pun, based on a story which is told, perhaps by Bacon himself, of his father, Sir The accuracy of these statements, as well as that of the others made by Mr. Donnelly and quoted here, may be verified by any one who can give an hour to the study of the Folio. 10 The spelling &c. in this passage, being for this purpose unimportant, have been modernised. The last word appears as 'Speare.' Nicholas." This scene does not occur in the Quarto of 1602. Nor does what Mr. Donnelly terms the very forced and unnatural construction' on page 54, where the jealous Ford is made to strike himself on the forehead and cry 'peere-out, peere-out;' nor, again, the description on page 56 of Herne the Hunter, who shakes a chain In a most hideous and dreadful manner. The occurrence of these two words 'shakes' and 'peere' under these circumstances is also among the observations which in the mass have been so much encouragement to Mr. Donnelly. It will now be seen that his researches proceeded upon a rule based on the mutual relations of the paging, the brackets, the italics, and the hyphens of the Folio text. This implies that these irregularities were inserted in manuscript for reproduction in the text, and that the proofs of the latter must have been submitted to their author for correction at the risk of rendering necessary a re-setting of a large portion of the type. This is a tremendous assumption indeed, but even for this there is something to be said. In the first place, the corrections would amount to nothing more than the addition or deletion of one or two hyphens or brackets, in case there was a word too few or too many in the page or the column; and in the second place Mr. Donnelly is content to wait until the publication of the Cipher with its workings and results will reduce this consideration from the rank of an objection to that of an eternal source of amazement. That this would be the case in the event of his establishing the genuine nature of his assertions seems clear, for that the Cipher should be true is not impossible, while that a continuous story should be mathematically worked out of the Plays by means of a consistent use of a non-existent Cipher is, by any known or conjectured law of chances, plainly out of the question. With respect to this matter of the addition and deletion of hyphens &c. in the proof sheets, an examination of the text will show that these do not really present the difficulties that at first appear inevitable. Hyphens might have been inserted between words which have such an original connection that their typographical junction would not create suspicion to the ordinary reader; this is "Apophthegms, S., E., & H., vol. vii. p. 185:- Sir Nicholas Bacon being appointed a judge for the northern circuit, and having brought his trials that came before him to such a pass as the passing of sentence on malefactors, he was by one of the malefactors mightily importuned for to save his life; which, when nothing that he had said did avail, he at length desired his mercy on account of kindred. "Prithee," said my lord judge, "how came that in?" "Why, if it please you, my lord, your name is Bacon, and mine is Hog, and in all ages Hog and Bacon have been so near kindred that they are not to be separated." "Ay, but," replied Judge Bacon, "you and I cannot be kindred except you be hanged, for Hog is not Bacon until it be well hanged." It is of no importance whether or not the anecdote is given by Bacon himself. 1 rendered more likely by the fact that words in some cases appear so joined in one place while in another they stand separate, as 'fore-tells,' first-born,' death-bed.' It seldom happens that the necessities of the case produce such striking irregularities as that quoted above from the Induction to II. Henry IV., where the words are the last of their page, as if the corrector had been on this occasion hard driven to make the numbers come right. An italic more or less can be secured by adding or omitting once the name of the interlocutor. Brackets are not so easily managed, and hence the more noticeable is their arbitrary use. 6 6 Mr. Donnelly reports other extraordinary discoveries. Agamemnon's speech containing the reference to the Masticke' jaws of Thersites (Troilus and Cressida, i. 3) does not appear in the Quarto, but is in the Folio inserted in the middle of the speech of Ulysses. This word commentators have generally altered into 'mastiff.' Mr. Donnelly assures us that it forms part of the word 'satire-o-masticke.' In the description of Falstaff's death in Henry V., ii. 3, the Folio reading (p. 75 of the Histories) is for his Nose was as sharp as a Pen, and a Table of greene fields.' (This passage does not appear in the Quarto.) Theobald's emendation is now generally accepted— 'and 'a babbled of green fields.' Mr. Donnelly declares, 'There was a necessity to speak in that sentence of the word "table," and it had to be dragged in whether it destroyed the sense or not.'12 'I have found,' he says, ' scores of other instances where the sense and the words were so twisted to bring in the Cipher story, and in many cases the necessities of the Cipher compelled Bacon to make his characters talk nonsense in passages that have puzzled commentators from that day to this.' 6 The above is an outline of what Mr. Donnelly has up to the present thought it safe to make known with reference to the origin and progress of the work of deciphering. It certainly is not much, but for reasons already given he declares that he cannot yet publish the whole rule. People must wait until he is out of danger of being forestalled, in the meantime taking what he says on trust. The multiples are, he writes, not the most important part of the Cipher. They do not bring the words out in their order. The transposed words have to be rearranged in proper order according to another system, which it took him two more years to discover. When the rule is published, it will prove to be so simple and clear that any one with a reprint of the Folio can decipher the Plays for himself.' 13 To his correspondent in England he writes enthusiastically 12 It is, however, considered not improbable that 'mastiff' and 'babbled,' or 'talked,' were the words originally written, and that Bacon foresaw that commentators would easily hit upon them. " Besides the large and expensive reproductions, there is one in reduced facsimile It is a most marvellous piece of work. The ingenuity used in constructing it is as great a subject of wonder to me as the genius manifested in the Plays has been to the world. . . . He seems to have written it, as it were, reckless of the trouble it would give him to work the words into the Plays—that is, the Plays were bent and twisted to conform to the Cipher, not the Cipher to the Plays. Later: I find it almost hopeless to attempt to give you a due impression of the marvellous nature of this Cipher. You, however, if any one can, will be able to conceive the marvellous ingenuity, versatility, wittiness, and patience which are here revealed to our contemplation. Bacon's ingenuity and nimbleness of mind were a thousand times greater than his genius, though that genius was the vastest and profoundest ever known in the world. . . . It was to these Plays that Bacon alluded when he spoke of the 'pinnacle of human industry.' ... This is strong language with a vengeance, but it must be remembered under the influence of what circumstances Mr. Donnelly was writing. Again : As I work the marvel grows upon me, how any human brain could have been ingenious enough to construct such a wonderful mosaic work. These Plays (I think I told you before) are that 'pinnacle of human industry' to which Bacon alludes, enigmatically, in his acknowledged writings, when he asks that the reader 'will not be appalled by them' (I quote from memory), 'considering the great experience that was had.'. . . The publication of the Cipher and my work will place Bacon upon an unapproachable height in human estimation, as not only the first of men, intellectually, but, as you know, with a vast gap between him and the second. In another letter he refers to the slowness of the process : It cannot be hastily or perfunctorily performed: the miscounting of a word, the reckoning of a hyphen too little or of a letter too much will throw out the count for pages and break the thread of discovery. In another he writes: : I know that it is hard to believe that one set of writings could be made the vehicle of another set, but the character of the age must be remembered, an age of tyranny and suppression; and we must remember too the extraordinary character of the mind that wrote the Plays-a mind not to be measured by any ordinary standard of ability or industry. A very interesting part of his correspondence is that in which he speaks of the results of the application of the Cipher rule to the text: At first, as you know, I expected no more than to find written into the Plays (perhaps a word on a page) a brief statement that Francis Bacon was their author. But as I went on the Cipher grew under my hands until I found it to be a complete and elaborate narrative, perfect in all its parts, minute in detail; containing not only a statement of facts, but a description of his own feelings in the midst of the published by Chatto & Windus, with an introduction by Mr. J. O. 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