HOLMES, Nathaniel, author, born in Peterboro, New Hampshire, 2 July, 1814. He was graduated at Harvard in 1837, studied in the Harvard law school, was admitted to the bar in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1839, and began practice in St. Louis. He was circuit attorney for that city in 1846, and one of the judges of the supreme court of Missouri in 1865-'8. From 1868 till 1872 he filled the Royall professorship of law in Harvard. From 1857 to 1883 he was corresponding secretary and one of the editors of the "Transactions" of the Academy of science of St. Louis. In 1883 he retired from business and returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts He is the author of a work on "The Authorship of Shakespeare," in which he strongly advocates the theory that Francis Bacon was the author of the Shakespearian dramas (New York, 1866: enlarged ed., Boston, 1886).