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The Frontispiece, engraved and brought to life by Mr. Joseph Andrews of Boston, is taken from the engraving (in Montagu's edition) of the white marble monument which was erected to the memory of Lord Bacon by "the care and gratitude" of Sir Thomas Meautys, within the precincts of old Verulam," representing his full portraiture in the posture of studying," says Dr. Rawley, together with a part of the inscription composed by that "rare wit," Sir Henry Wotton.

Without more, the work is submitted to the consideration and judgment of the general jury of candid readers; and, as more than one author has said before, if they shall find half the pleasure in reading it that I have had in writing it, they shall be welcome.

ST. LOUIS, May 21st, 1866.

N. HOLMES.

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§ 1. ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

§ 2. THE AS YOU LIKE IT.—A MODEL
§ 3. THE TIMON OF ATHENS. A MODEL

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THE

AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE

CHAPTER I.

PRELIMINARIES. — SHAKESPEARE.

"Do not inflate plain things into marvels, but reduce marvels to plain things." BACON.

§ 1. EARLY LIFE.

THE biography of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE may now be considered as in the main settled and fixed for all time. Modern research has explored every forgotten corner in search of new facts; all discoverable archives and dusty repositories of lost books and derelict papers have been ransacked; every known record, monument, and relic, of the age in which he lived, has been thoroughly questioned, even to the last trace and tradition of his name and family; and, failing any further genuine data, the most ingenious and consummate forgeries have been attempted. And if all honest inquiry be not yet exhausted, it has been made sufficiently clear, at least, that but little more can be added hereafter to what is already known of his personal history, and nothing that can be expected materially to change the general scope and character of the latest received account of his life. He is thus delivered down to us as essentially an uneducated man, whether we are to speak of education in the sense of modern times, or of the sixteenth century. or of the ancient schools. True, there have been great self-educated men in all times; as, indeed, who is not, at last, in one sense, a self-educated man? That there is a

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