Mrs. Charlotte Carmichael Stopes forestalls a certain line of criticism upon her "Life of Henry, Third Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's Patron" (Cambridge University Press, 42s. net), by disclaiming for it any other character an a collection of materials. Judged from that standpoint it is indeed invaluable—as those who are otherwise acquainted with Mrs. Stopes's industry. and scholarship will readily believe. The particulars of Southampton's acquaintance with Shakespeare must, with our present information, be very a matter of inference and speculation, and Mrs. Stopes sets forth her own theory of the matter, with every precaution to mark where knowledge ends and theory begins. She has, however, some interesting details to put in their proper place the biography. of this brilliant young nobleman. His chronic financial difficulties turn out to be Aue to the exaction of £5,000 as damages for his failure to marry, after long procrastination, the grand-daughter of Burleigh—whicn Mrs. Stopes declares to be the first recorded breach of promise case. One of her most readable chapters is that describing the bungled insurrection of Essex, for his share in which Southampton was lucky not to lose his herd. His absence from London as Captain of Carisbrook Castle may have served him in good stead, too, when the Gunpowder Plot. compromised small number of his friends. Mrs. Stopes, by the way, has a sugges-ction of her own about the identity sot the "Mr. W. H." whose connexion with Shakespeare's sonnets has been so much discussed. It points to Sir Wilfiam Harvey, who became the third husband of Southampton's mother.
"Modern as Iam, and_ hopeful as I am of modernity, I cannot think that the predominance of fiction, even of such fiction as is written to-day, is a good sign: and when we sce that it leads nowhere, that the people who read much it never read anything else, and that it is an intellectual cul-de-sac, our alarm at the phenomenon is the greater." R. Orage, in "Readers and ters."
Anatole France, who is 78, went to Stockholm to receive his Nobel prize just after recovering from a severe illness. He was fearful of catching cold, and wore several well-padded_ waistcoats under_ his coat. The Swedish Custom officers were suspicious. What have you got in here?" one of them asked, with his hands on the great nove-dist's coat. "France," was the reply.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.