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As Jaqueline was about to interrupt and explain, Rosetta enjoined silence. Rose stared hard at the doll, and continued, in a sharp voice: Come, my fine dear, what is your name? It's so silly to be shy.' She shook the speechless one impatiently, and then remarked reproachfully to Jaqueline: She doesn't know her own name, the great silly.'

She is very young,' murmured Jaqueline.
She doesn't look very young.'

She can only say "Mamma." There!'

Rose's face expressed disappointment, and her little chin was curiously like her father's, as she said decidedly :

'I shall undress her, stick some pins into her, and put her into the corner. She ought to be thoroughly ashamed of herself.'

Rosetta said, as if she were talking to an equal: Why, Brownie, the Aunts will think that I stick pins into you.' Rose's eyes flashed.

me.'

'Nobody, not even His Ex., would dare to stick pins into

'Quel enfant!' murmured Jaqueline.

Alone with Jaqueline, Prudence stated her opinion that the child had, perhaps, been spoilt.'

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Why not, Sister?'

Why not! You approve?'

I have thought sometimes that we were, perhaps, a little hard upon Rosetta, a thought too severe. We did not encourage artless confidence. We may have erred, upon the right side, of course.'

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'It is possible,' said Prudence.

The child is a clever darling-so original.'

'Takes after her father.'

'Do you think Rosetta will lend her to us?'

'She ought to have plenty of fresh air, and good, wholesome food. It is absurd, of course, but her complexion inspired in my mind the thought that she may have been allowed to eat curry."

After a discreet inquiry this very natural hypothesis was found to be incorrect.

When the Aunts returned to Charminster, Rose and her nurse accompanied them. Rosetta remained in London, busy with her new house and innumerable engagements. She pro

mised to run down for a few days' visit at the first available moment. Then she asked abruptly :

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How are the Lovibonds? It will be delightful meeting her again.'

Prudence looked at Jaqueline.

'Didn't we tell you? The Lovibonds are at Melchester. He is a Canon there, with a charming house in the Cathedral Close. Mrs. Lovibond is much aged. Our new Vicar, Mr. Easter, is a fine preacher, and a great acquisition to our little circle. His wife is very pleasant, and there are children.'

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'Poor Septimus! To be sure, he was a great friend of yours. He paid us a visit last year.'

You never mentioned that.'

'Did we not? How remiss! Yes, indeed, he paid us his respects. The poor fellow has indifferent health. I failed to recognise him. He has done better than might be expected. I believe he owns a newspaper somewhere in the Antipodes. We remarked of him that he seemed antipodean."

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'Quite,' said Jaqueline.

What do you mean by antipodean?'

One dislikes to find fault with the son of a dear friend, but he struck us as having lived too long upon the other side of the world. Over there, no doubt, a certain roughness of speech and manner is not too severely criticised.'

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'My dear, surely you have not forgotten the shocking incident of the tiger?'

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I have not forgotten that.'

The poor fellow could hardly hope to find favour in the

eyes of the right kind of wife, and his dear mother's son would not marry the wrong kind.'

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You wrote to me that he was writing a book. You used a capital "B."'

'What a memory you have! I had quite forgotten. I take it that he couldn't find a publisher.'

Rosetta asked no more questions.

(To be continued.)

A NOTE ON MR. ANDREW LANG'S ARTICLE.

6

MORE than three years have elapsed since Mr. John Lane published on my behalf a book called The Shakespeare Problem Restated.' Mr. Andrew Lang has now done me the honour to criticise that work in the CORNHILL MAGAZINE for September last. Serus tamen respexit. I cannot now attempt to reply to that criticism, for the very good reason that only two pages of this Magazine can be granted me wherein to comment on the sixteen pages of Mr. Lang's article. I will therefore content myself with a protest and a disclaimer. Mr. Lang, either per incuriam, or, more probably, in consequence of my own want of lucidity, has represented me as starting with a proposition which, as a fact, I have never advanced, and the absurdity of which it is very easy to demonstrate. For what is the proposition which Mr. Lang supposes I have put forward? According to him my contention is that some unknown man, whom he calls 'X,' adopted the name of William Shakespeare,' or Shake-speare,' as a good nom de guerre, without any reference to the fact that there was an actor in existence of the name of William Shakspere, whose name was sometimes written Shakespeare, and without the least idea that the works he published under this pseudonym would be fathered upon the actor; and, further, that the public (or, rather, I would say, such members of it as thought about such things at all in those days) did not really entertain the belief that the actor was the author of the plays and poems! Having set this before his readers as the proposition which I am concerned to establish, Mr. Lang, of course, finds no difficulty whatever in showing that it is not a rational If an unknown man, X, signed his pcems "William Shake-speare," when another "William Shakspere" was before the world, the world must confuse the two men.' So writes Mr. Lang, and if by the world' he means the very few Englishmen who, in Elizabethan times, concerned themselves at all, or cared one brass farthing, about the authorship of plays, my answer is Exactly so!' That is what I conceive did happen and was intended to happen. Mr. Lang has discharged his arrows at a target of his own setting up, in which I have no interest whatever. But if, before writing his critique, he had done me the honour to read my recently published book, The Vindicators of Shakespeare: A Reply to Critics,' he would not, am sure, have put into my mouth the silly proposition which he imagines I have undertaken to maintain. For in that book (p. 64) I have written as follows:- If plays and poems were published under the name of "Shakespeare," by which name. the man who wrote himself Shakspere was, it seems, not

one.

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infrequently known to his contemporaries, no doubt they would be generally accepted as written by the player. That many

plays in which Shakespeare had no part were, nevertheless, ascribed to him, because published in that name, is a simple matter of fact. But contemporary belief that he was the author of such plays would, of course, be no proof that he wrote them. It would only show that the witnesses had been deceived. Nay, the fact that Titus Andronicus was included in the Folio as Shakespeare's, and was ascribed to him by such an unprejudiced witness as Meres, in 1598, is so far from being considered a conclusive proof of the true authorship that the overwhelming balance of orthodox " opinion is to the effect that Shakespeare had no hand in it at all.'

66

I should be glad, were space allowed me, to take up many other points in Mr. Lang's article-to show, for example, that so far is it from the truth that I dismiss John Weever's allusion to Shakespeare with but few words because my power of explaining away' deserts me, the fact is that there is nothing whatever here which calls for any explanation at all, and that Weever (pace Mr. Lang) says nothing whatever to indicate that he regarded the author and the player as identical; to show that it is not Kempe who says that his fellow-actor "puts down" all the University playwrights,' but that this is only what the unknown University dramatist, who is ridiculing 'the rude halfeducated strolling players,' puts into the mouth of the actor who represented player Kempe, the clown, upon the stage in the Parnassus play; to show that Mr. Lang is, as I venture to say, mistaken when he describes Shakspere as a groom of the Royal Bedchamber,' and to set forth the real facts as to the appointment of the King's Players as Grooms of the Chamber, and the real meaning of such appointment; to show how entirely different from the case of Shakspere of Stratford are the instances, cited by Mr. Lang, of Hooker and Samuel Daniel, as men who, though well read men,' made no mention of books in their wills, and that there is really no analogy as between Shakspere's case and theirs. But these and other points upon which much might be said in reply to Mr. Lang must be left unanswered, at least in the pages of the CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

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Mr. Lang tells us that he writes for those who distrust their own powers of grappling with Mr. Greenwood's portly volume of 523 pages.' I must really beg such persons either to read my poor book for themselves, or, if they choose what is, perhaps, the wiser part, and decline to undertake that labour, at least not to think scorn of arguments which they have not read, on the strength of an article from which I do not hesitate to saythough I know that Mr. Lang is, in intention, the fairest of critics-it is impossible for them to obtain the materials which are absolutely necessary for the formation of a just and unprejudiced judgment upon the case. G. G. GREENWOOD.

AT THE SIGN OF THE

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to this Paper the Editor offers a prize of

Two Guineas. The name of the Prizewinner will be announced in the December number of the Magazine, together with the correct answers to the questions.

PAPER X.

On the Works of Mr. Rudyard Kipling.

By C. L. GRAVES.

1. Translate minauderie into the Mulvaneyan dialect. Answer: 'Menowderin' and menanderin' and blandandherin'.' (Soldiers Three.')

2. Who wouldn't allow her father to talk of the devil's colours'? Answer: Learoyd's dying sweetheart. ('Life's Handicap.')

3. Whose husband had his face slapped for a bone-idle beggar'? Answer: Mrs. Poone. ('Life's Handicap.')

4. What sort of champagne was drunk by the horse-artillery in Egypt? Answer: Somethin' Brutt.' ('Seven Seas.')

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5. Who was the 'silvery ghost' that rose bolt upright and sighed a weird whistling sigh'? Answer: The grampus. (Captains Courageous.')

6. To what was the landing of a twelve-pound salmon as nothing in comparison? Answer: Meeting with Mark Twain. (From Sea to Sea.') 7. Who said it is not good to look at death with a clear eye'? Answer: (The Day's Work.')

Peroo.

8. Who was the Gadarene swine'?

Co.')

Answer: The Fat M.P. ('Stalky &

9. Who never gets into the middle of the room? Answer: Chuchundra, the musk-rat. ('Jungle Book.')

10. What is full of nickel-plated sentiments guaranteed to improve the mind'? Answer: The Ladies' Home Journal. (Traffics and Discoveries.')

11. Whose deaths were triple-headed? Answer: Some successful kings and queens. (The Five Nations.')

12. What is the worst rhyme in Mr. Kipling's poems? Answer: 'Talks and such' and 'Torques and such.' ('Just-so Stories.')

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