tance, who bore the honoured name of Siddons,
was invited to take part in the funeral service of the late Sir Henry
Irving. His step-father was connected by marriage with the great
actress, and he was very proud of his physical resemblance to her
portrait by Reynolds. He had played with great success the part of
Fortinbras in the provinces, and Mr. Alexander has assured me that he was
the ideal impersonator of Rosencrantz. It was an open secret that he had
refused Mr. Arthur Bourchier's offer of that _role_ in a proposed revival
of _Hamlet_ at the Garrick. Since the burial of Sir Henry Irving in the
Abbey, _he has never been seen_: though I saw him myself in the funeral
_cortege_. All his friends remember the curious exaltation in his manner
a few days before the ceremony, and I cannot help thinking that in a
moment of enthusiasm, realising that this was his only chance of burial
in the Abbey, he took advantage of the bowed unobservant heads during the
prayer of Committal and crept beneath the pall into the great actor's
tomb. What his feelings were at the time, or afterwards when the vault
was bricked up, would require the introspective pen of Mr. Henry James
and the curious imagination of Mr. H. G. Wells to describe. I have been
assured by the vergers that mysterious sounds were heard for some days
after this historical occasion. Distressed by the loss of my friend, I
applied to the Dean of Westminster and finally to Scotland Yard. I need
not say that I was met with sacerdotal indifference on the one hand and
with callous officialism on the other. I hope that under the Royal
Commission which I have appointed the mystery will be cleared up. Not
that I begrudge poor Siddons a niche with Garrick and Irving.

(1906.)

_To_ PROFESSOR JAMES MAYOR, _Toronto University_.

THE ELETHIAN MUSE.

After chaperoning into Fleet Street the eleventh Muse, the rather
Batavian lady who is not to be found in that Greek peerage, Lempriere's
Dictionary, an obliging correspondent from Edinburgh (an eminent writer
to the Signet in our northern Thebes) inquired if there were any more
muses who had escaped the students of comparative mythology. It is in
response to his letter that I now present, as Mr. Charles Frohman would
say, the thirteenth, the Elethian Muse.

Yet I can fancy people asking, Where is the twelfth, and over what art or
science does she preside? According to Apollodorus (in a recently
recovered fragmen