symbol." Where, therefore, I would ask Mr. Lee, in "the Stratford archives" did he come upon "evidence that John Shakespeare could write with facility"? In his article on Shakespeare in the Dictionary of National Biography, Mr. Lee himself says:—"But however well she [Shakspere's mother] was provided for, she was only able, like her husband, to make her mark in lieu of signing her name." In the same article we read:—"When attesting documents he made his mark, and there is no evidence that he could write." According, therefore, to Mr. Lee, with regard to the elder Shakspere (1) "There is evidence that he could write with facility," and (2) "There is no evidence that he could write."
Bacon is never mentioned in the body of the work; but Mr. Lee dismisses the Baconian theory in a contemptible and equally contemptuous "Appendix." In regard to the "Parallelisms," Mr. Lee declares that "most of them that are commonly quoted are phrases in ordinary use by all writers of the day"—a statement far removed from the truth. I can give him dozens of (1) Identical Expressions, (2) Identical Metaphors, (3) Identical Opinions, (4) Identical Quotations, (5) Identical Studies, (6) Identical Errors, (7) Identical use of unusual words, (8) Identities of Character, and (9) Indentities of Style, that were not "in ordinary use by all writers of the day," or by any one writer. "One parallelism has no significance; five attract attention ; ten suggest inquiry; twenty raise a presumption; fifty establish a probability; a hundred dissolve every doubt"; but a thousand will not affect Mr. Lee's pre-conceived idea a single jot, although Oliver Wendell Holmes declared: "The wonderful parallelisms [in Shakespeare and Bacon] must and will be wrought out and followed out to such fair conclusions as they shall be found to force honest minds to adopt. …
