m. The first thing that
will strike him is that Shakespeare's thoughts turned constantly to
the birthdays of all his Fitton-heroines, as a lover's thoughts always
do turn to the moment at which the loved one first saw the light.
"There was a star danced, and under that" was born Beatrice. Juliet
was born "on Lammas Eve." Marina tells us she derived her name from
the chance of her having been "born at sea." And so on, throughout the
whole gamut of women in whom Mary Fitton was bodied forth to us. But
mark how carefully Shakespeare says never a word about the birthdays
of the various shrews and sluts in whom, again and again, he gave
us his wife. When and were was born Queen Constance, the scold? And
Bianca? And Doll Tearsheet, and "Greasy Jane" in the song, and all
the rest of them? It is of the last importance that we should know.
Yet never a hint is vouchsafed us in the text. It is clear that
Shakespeare cannot bring himself to write about Anne Hathaway's
birthday--will not stain his imagination by thinking of it. That is
entirely human-natural. But why should he loathe Christmas Day itself
with precisely the same loathing? There is but one answer--and that
inevitable-final. The two days were one.

Some soul-secrets are so terrible that the most hardened realist of us
may well shrink from laying them bare. Such a soul-secret was this of
Shakespeare's. Think of it! The gentlest spirit that ever breathed,
raging and fuming endlessly in impotent-bitter spleen against the
prettiest of festivals! Here is a spectacle so tragic-piteous that,
try as we will, we shall not put it from us. And it is well that we
should not, for in our plenary compassion we shall but learn to love
the man the more.

[Mr. Fr*nk H*rr*s is very much a man of genius, and I should
be sorry if this adumbration of his manner made any one
suppose that I do not rate his writings about Shakespeare
higher than those of all "the Professors" together.--M.B.]

SCRUTS

_By_

ARN*LD B*NN*TT

I.

Emily Wrackgarth stirred the Christmas pudding till her right arm
began to ache. But she did not cease for that. She stirred on till her
right arm grew so numb that it might have been the right arm of some
girl at the other end of Bursley. And yet something deep down in her
whispered "It is _your_ right arm! And you can do what you like with
it!"

She did what she liked with it. Relentlessly she kept it moving till
it reasserted itself