By the simple process of cancelling one inference against another I came to the conclusion that what was left of the biography of Shakespeare was a few facts about the Actor, and the work of the Poet. As a mere step in a scientific enquiry I turned to see if Bacon could have signed his name to works for which he was supposedly responsible, by some such cipherer's trick as that of Francesco Colonna, and after some methodical tests I found that he, or others, had done so. Scientifically speaking, there can be no such thing as orthodox or unorthodox scholarship. Such phrases belong to the bygone age of the ecclesiastical pedagogue. The man who allows his inferences to crystallise into an 'orthodox opinion' is on the highroad to oblivion, or is courting the riducule of posterity.
Literary history is a science.
It is a matter of facts. No lasting history can be built on opinion, and no scholarship which is afraid of enquiry can retain respect. The main conclusion we reach after examing many first known editions of works of obscure authorship is that it is unsafe to base our scholarship on any man's inferences or reports. We must see the original document, and study it in the light of the literary practice or habit of its time. W.C. Chase, J. Koren, C.E. Merrill, Jr., Alonzo Rothschild, W.L. Stoddard, and H.F.Stone.