like the master of them all at any moment, to sing when the fancy caught him. As the convalescent read and read again the Shakespearian songs one after another he found himself wondering how any being of ordinary intelligence could think that the same hand wrote, "The World's a bubble, and the life of Man Less than a span"; and then, "Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings." Or if there be a faint doubt about "The World," described as "Lord Verulam's elegant Tapwdía of a Greek epigram," is it conceivable that the man who wrote "That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs,' where late the sweet birds sang"; the few he could easily call to mind. There was Webster, of whom nothing is known, but who wrote two powerful tragedies which are still read and in which are touches worthy of the master. His dark and sinister genius, as we see it displayed in the "Duchess of Malfi" and "Vittoria Corombona," seems as unfitted as possible for lyric poetry, and yet when the mood was on him he wrote the famous song, sad as one might expect from him, but full of tender feeling, which is called a "land dirge" and which begins: "Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren." Then the convalescent thought of Heywood, a second-rate man, his plays read only by students of the Elizabethan literature, and yet Heywood could write, "Pack, clouds, away, and welcome day, a song worthy of a place in the Shake who gave us one of Matthew Arnold's spearian group. The next that came to great touchstones of poetry, "Absent thee from felicity awhile," could also have been guilty of such lines as: "O sing a new song to our God above; Avoid profane ones, 'tis for holy quire"; which are far below Addison's "Spacious firmament on high," and by no means up to the level of Doctor Watts? Internal evidence is notoriously untrustworthy; yet it is beyond belief that the same man could have written all these three poems or sets of verses. One can only repeat in despair the saying of Henry Labouchere: "I am perfectly willing to admit that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays if they will only tell me who wrote the works of Bacon." But as the reader closed the book he reflected that after all it was less surprising that Shakespeare should have written all these songs, scattered with prodigal hand here and there throughout the plays, than the fact that all the dramatists of that day could each and all apparently write a quite perfect song of great lyrical beauty at least once if they set themselves to do it. The convalescent ran over to himself mind was Shirley, latest of the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists. His plays are not now read at all; it may be doubted if even the name of any one of them is remembered except by students of literature. Yet every one knows the lines, which are a familiar quotation, "Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust"; and these are by no means the best lines in a noble poem. In the quiet room the convalescent recalled gradually the whole of the lyric. Take as an example of its quality the opening lines of the last stanza: "The garlands wither on your brow; Then boast no more your mighty deeds; There is the splendor of the great epoch in these lines and here we find it in this weak and forgotten playwright, the last of the great succession. Then, well beyond the end of the mighty line, memory declared that we could find an example of the great tradition still lingering in a man whose name is well known on account of a dim connection with Shakespeare, whose plays are all unread, who flourished in the years of decadence, Sir William Davenant, and yet even then he could write a song worthy of the "spacious days": "The lark now leaves his wat'ry nest, How the lines sing themselves. There rings in them the echo of the glorious days, of the days when the audiences at the "Theatre" or the "Globe" heard the boy sing to Mariana in the moated grange: "Take, O take those lips away, Bring again; Seals of love, but seal'd in vain, The convalescent, of course, could not solve the problem. Yet it was very pleasant to lie in the stillness and watch the gray mists, and wonder how these poets and dramatists managed to write such songs in those days long past, and why the art seemed to have been lost, and get no answer to the questioning but the sound of the musical lines softly chiming as they ran along the chords of memory. From the early poets one went easily on, when once started, to the much-loved poets of later days, beginning with the immortal group at the opening of the nineteenth century. The songs of Shakespeare led naturally to the plays, not at first to the great tragedies but to the comedies, where one is borne away into another world which never existed anywhere, and yet exists always and everywhere, a world filled with romance, with light and life and humor, broken here and there by the deep notes of tragedy, full of beautiful poetry and peopled with characters which can never grow old because they are as eternal as humanity with no touch of the fleeting fashion of a day about them. The convalescent had loved them long and truly, but it seemed to him that he . This song, as is well known, occurs also in Fletcher's "Bloody Brother," with a second and inferior stanza. I think every one must agree with Mr. Dyce that it is the work of Shakespeare, although the second stanza may well bave been added by Fletcher. had never known them so well before, never realized so fully what delightful companions they were, so much more real than any historical figures of men and women who had actually lived and wrought out their lives upon the earth to which long since they had returned. The physical ability to read indefinitely, by the hour together, came back rapidly, and with it the power of reading new books appeared. They could not take the place of those which had come first, of the poetry and imaginings among which memory and thought had so happily roamed and wandered. But these new books began to share the hours with the old. There was no poetry among them. The convalescent had expected no novels, for, although the new novels are countless, they suggest generally only Emerson's rule, "When I hear of a new book I take down an old one." Of course the endless swarms which, like flights of brown-tailed moths upon a wall, flutter down in their myriads upon the bookstalls clad in gay paper covers, the chief incitement to their sale, were out of the question. Even in robust strength the mind turns from them as it does instinctively from those of the "hundred thousand copies sold" which are usually as quickly and irretrievably forgotten within the next year as Pomfret's "Choice," which sold its innumerable editions in the eighteenth century. Still more emphatically did the mind, sensitive and longing for a happy content, turn from the morbid, the sordid, and above all from the solemnly moral novels with a purpose to which just now a passing notoriety is so readily accorded. Nevertheless, from this unpromising field, unpromising perhaps owing to the reader's distaste for it, there came quite unexpectedly some stories by one author which not only amused but which brought with them the sense of new characters, created characters, with whom it was a pleasure to live for the brief hour while one read their adventures. When Biron in the midst of the pleasant fooling and jesting of "Love's Labour's Lost" says, "To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be; it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony." we suddenly hear the deep tragic note which was one day to become familiar to the world in "Lear" and "Othello." But the task imposed by Rosaline does not go quite so far as Biron's interpretation would make it. She tells him that it must be his part "To enforce the painèd impotent to smile." It is a difficult feat but it is not impossible, and the words of this the earliest, probably, of Shakespeare's charming women, came freshly to his mind when the convalescent found himself laughing out loud as he read, quite alone, "George Birmingham's" story of "Spanish Gold." Merely as a story it has the romantic charm. The search for buried treasure always has an unfailing fascination and the scene of the book is laid most fittingly in a remote, unfrequented island among a people isolated from the world, not yet drilled into uniformity by civilization, and at once picturesque, humorous, and pathetic. Upon this stage the characters appear: all are real people; all in their degree entertaining and interesting. But there is one, who stands out as the hero, who is a genuine creation, so natural, so delightful, that we welcome him to that goodly company of friends whom we owe to human imagination, from whom we cannot be parted, and who are more really living than those who have actually walked the patient earth. John Joseph Meldon is a being very much alive. To one very grateful reader under adverse circumstances he came as a joy, bringing laughter with him and leaving a strong feeling of personal affection behind him. He is again the hero in the "Major's Niece" where he has all the fascination which he possesses in "Spanish Gold," although the former story has not the romantic attraction of the adventures in search of treasure to be found in the tale born of the Armada tradition. Doctor O'Grady in "General John Regan" and Doctor Whitty in the book that bears his name are variants of the Meldon type, but neither is quite equal to the original, al though both are delightful persons. In the "Red Hand of Ulster," beneath the easy humor and the kindly satire, runs a deeper purpose. In the picture of the resolved Ulstermen with their great fighting traditions, of their inability to resist the forces of the empire if really employed against them, and of the vacillations of the ministry and their unwillingness so to employ their equally reluctant army and navy, the truth of the Ulster situation seems to be very sharply depicted. But the predominant feeling in the mind of one solitary reader was that of gratitude to Canon Hannay for bestowing upon him the acquaintance, the friendship, and the conversation of J. J. Meldon. The In one respect it is sad to confess this attractive person proved a traitor, for the tales of his exploits opened the door to other new books which were welcomed by the regained power to read without limit, and the stories of real men who had lived and toiled and vanished came in to share the hours which the poets and the dramatists had for many days monopolized. Instead of playing unfettered in the fields of memory and imagination, the thoughts came back to the world of facts and knowledge. The dream light in which the convalescent had been living so contentedly gave way to the daylight. cares which infest the day and the habitual interests and pursuits began to show themselves and with insistent voices demanded a surcease of the neglect from which they had suffered and a renewal of the attention which they were wont to command. They would not be denied, these old occupations and duties, and, although there were still many tracts of time which went to books, new and old, to meditation on things which were of no practical use, and therefore peculiarly delightful, they asserted their mastery more and more until at last it was complete. After this there were no more roamings without plan or purpose in pleasant realms of memory and fancy, and the diversions of the convalescent which had made him happy during so many motionless hours came to an end. P THE UNIT By Elizabeth Herrick ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALONZO KIMBALL ROFESSOR HERSCHEL himself upright. At the rustle of the came back slowly to con- shrubbery she turned a startled head. sciousness. The sound of And now for the first time he saw her the Hellespont waves, blue face-a skin milk-white, with a bloom. and sunny, was in his ears, upon it like the flush of dawn when rosyand the sunny Grecian fingered Eos rides up the sky; eyes longsky, lustrous as a dome of lapis lazuli, lashed, wondrous, deep as pools, yet alight arched overhead. In the near distance, with that warm brightness of which one up a little shining river, women had knows not whether it is brown or gold; brought their clothes to wash, like Nau- but her hair was gold, fillet-bound, yet sicaa and her maidens, and a song rose escaping in truant tendrils that the ocean among them. . . . breeze stirred in a glittering penumbra around her head. And a like golden light seemed to radiate about her and enwrap her, and to lay upon the stream, from which she emerged like Aphrodite from the waters of the sea, a brightness rivalling the morning's. The professor felt his heart tremble. In such guise, surely, doth the immortal goddess reveal herself to men. The professor lifted his head. It was morning. He lay in a damp, huddled heap under the bushes that had sheltered him overnight; but the song he had heard was still singing, and the sunlight flashed and sparkled on the little shining river, visible from his covert through the interstices of leafy overhanging branches. At first appearance he seemed to be alone, but the song went on in a voice bewilderingly sweet, whether the voice of mortal woman or of a nymph possessing the fountains of the river Greek in words, certainly, and chanted rather than sung, while at each swing of strophe and antistrophe there was a splash in the shining river, and, as the professor painfully lifted himself, a glimpse of a gleaming ankle below some straight blue drapery that clung to a supple figure, half revealing, half suggesting its curves-a picture so typically Greek that, to a mind professionally so and hardly yet returned from its subconscious journeying, it seemed scarcely matter for surprise that its scenic background should be a Maine forest. Two facts were certain: the damsel was Greek, as her song evidenced; and she was washing, for at each splash the supple figure stooped and wrung something out of the water, then vanished with it behind a shad-tree that flourished on a point of land running just far enough into the stream to hide what lay beyond it. She came back, and the professor dragged Twice she came back and twice the professor rose to go to her, but, as seems de rigueur with all those, ancient or modern, to whom the goddess appears, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and his lips were dumb. And yet, as with Homer's immortal hero in an analogous predicament, stern temporal necessity, the twinges of a broken arm, a dull ache in the side of his head, and, no less, the ravenings of the inner man, demanded that he have speech with her, whoever she might be, and discover "into what country of men " he had now come. Twice again she disappeared and stepped back into view, before his necessity overcame him, and, not to alarm her more than was inevitable, he gently parted the branches between them and thrust his head into the open. "Maiden," he said gently, in irreproachable Greek. Yet, despite both Greek and caution, she, like Nausicaa, or like a woman, dropped what she held with a little shriek, half fright, half-the professor feared-laughter, though sweet in its mu sic as befitted the laughter of the blessed gods, and disappeared with a splash behind the friendly shelter of the shad-tree. Straightway the professor's mind, like a well-read volume, opened to the reason. "But he appeared dreadful unto them, being defiled with the brine"-thus, for all time, hath the immortal bard drawn man and woman! Nevertheless, the ice being broken, the professor went crashing through the branches, making up his mind as he went how to address her so as to banish her fear and reassure her as to his status in society. But as he emerged from the thicket on the farther side of the little promontory, the speech he had so carefully composed -in Greek-deserted his lips, for there, certainly, in a pool or inlet stood, as, indeed, in analogy, it was bound to stand, the lofty chariot having good wheels for which Nausicaa had asked her father, its varnished tonneau shining from its recent bath, and Nausicaa herself beside it, in her classic drapery of blue and hastily resumed shoes and stockings, getting up the spark with frantic haste. A grassy road led down a gentle incline. to the cove. The big machine was already beginning to pant and puff, and Nausicaa, the modern, showed indubitable symptoms of jumping into it. It was now or never, the professor realized. With craft worthy of the hero he found himself impersonating, he stepped directly into the monster's path and then, and not till then, began to speak propitiatory words. "Please don't go," he begged in English, for the make of the chariot was unmistakably of the latest model. "I'm not a tramp. I had trouble with the engine of my motor-cruiser in yesterday's storm, and tried to make shore in a rowboat. I lost the boat and nearly my life, and I have been in the woods here all night. I heard your" he hesitated, then pedagogical instinct, thoroughly awakened, supplied the expression he wanted, "-musical scansion. I am Dr. Herschel, professor of Greek language and literature in Houghton College for Women." Was there or was there not a sparkle of merriment in those shimmering golden pools, the girl's eyes? Small wonder if there was, for his personal appearance— his torn and brine-stained flannels and emergency-bandaged head-was, the professor realized, at humorous variance with his pretensions. But she did not, as her look at first had indicated that she would, pull back the lever and ride him down. "I see," she said. "At first I didn't recognize you-that is, I thought you were a tramp." The professor lifted his yachting-capor tried to; he had left that head-gear behind him for the use of Poseidon-but the gesture was eloquent of what it was meant to be. Embarrassment reddened his cheek, but, despite it and increasing faintness, he rose gallantly to the occasion. "Another case of mistaken identity," he said. "At first I took you for a nymph." Again that illusive sparkle-amusement? appreciation? comprehension?-in the liquid depths of the first pair of women's eyes that Dr. Herschel had ever seriously observed. "I am flattered," she said. "I suppose it was my 'musical scansion'?” Now, the professor had spent too many years teaching women to know much about them, but he felt a sudden craving to be taught. Dizziness and the pain of his injured arm behooved him to ask his way to the nearest doctor's. Instead, he endeavored to hold his physical self erect in the primrose path of dalliance. "It was yourself, as I saw you through the bushes." This time it was the girl who blushed, the delicate bloom on her skin exquisitely ripened. "Oh! And what do you think me now?" Thus invited, the professor let his eyes rest full on her beauty. There was such mystery in its charm, such strange commingling, to his hardly yet well-ordered senses, of dream and waking, of past and present, that his answer, to the girl's ears the speech of gallantry, was, in fact, quite truthful. "I hardly know"-then, with a glance at the car, the "lofty chariot with good wheels"-"the daughter of Alcinous, perhaps," he hazarded, a humorous gleam lightening fine but sombre eyes. |