It may however not be without advantage to those who are becoming
convinced against their will, if we place before them a few of the
utterances of men of the greatest distinction who, without being
furnished with the information which we have been able to afford to our
readers, were possessed of sufficient intelligence and common sense to
perceive the truth respecting the real authorship of the Plays.
LORD PALMERSTON, b. 1784, d. 1865.
Viscount Palmerston, the great British statesman, used to say that he
rejoiced to have lived to see three things--the re-integration of Italy,
the unveiling of the mystery of China and Japan, and the explosion of
the Shakespearian illusions.--_From the Diary of the Right Hon.
Mount-Stewart E. Grant_.
LORD HOUGHTON, b. 1809, d. 1885.
Lord Houghton (better known as a statesman under the name of Richard
Monckton Milnes) reported the words of Lord Palmerston, and he also told
Dr. Appleton Morgan that he himself no longer considered Shakespeare,
the actor, as the author of the Plays.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, b. 1772, d. 1834.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the eminent British critic and poet, although
he assumed that Shakespeare was the author of the Plays, rejected the
facts of his life and character, and says: "Ask your own hearts, ask
your own common sense, to conceive the possibility of the author of the
Plays being the anomalous, the wild, the irregular genius of our daily
criticism.
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