speare of London. They appear
like two entirely different and almost irreconcilable personalities.
All that is known of either renders all that is claimed for the other
improbable. Many dual lives have been lived before and since, but none
seem so incompatible as these.

It is unlikely that the claim of Shakespeare to the authorship of the
dramas that bear his name will ever be overthrown. His title has been
too long conceded to be successfully contested. That he wrote them can
now be neither proved nor refuted, but there are inherent
improbabilities that must always make the Shakespearean legend a
profoundly fascinating subject of psychological consideration.

And were he to be dethroned, to whom should the sceptre and the crown
be given? Lord Bacon had a kingly soul, capacious great thoughts, and
high designs, but no one who has read his metrical translation of the
Psalms of David will be troubled again with doubts whether he was the
writer also of "Macbeth," "Othello," and "Lear." Compared with these
sterile, bald, and mechanical quatrains, the sacred hymns of Isaac
Watts are howling and bacchanalian anacreontics, to be hiccoughed by
drunkards in their most abandoned hours of revelry.

Pondering upon the mystery as I walked up and down beneath the flaring
lights, on the windy platform at Bletchley, waiting, after a day at
Stratford, for a belated train to London, I reflected that genius has
no pedigree nor prescription, and that at last the greatest marvel
was, not that the tragedy of "Hamlet" was written by Shakespeare, but
that it was written at all.

[Signature of the author.]

MOLIERE

Extracts from "Moliere," by SIR WALTER SCOTT

(1622-1673)

[Illustration: Moliere.]

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was christened at Paris, January 15, 1622. His
family consisted of decent burghers, who had for two or three
generations followed the business of manufacturers of tapestry, or
dealers in that commodity. Jean Poquelin, the father of the poet, also
enjoyed the office of valet-de-chambre in the royal household. He
endeavored to bring his son up to the same business, but finding that
it was totally inconsistent with the taste and temper of the young
Jean-Baptiste, he placed him at the Jesuits' College of Clermont, now
the College of Louis-le-Grand. Young Poquelin had scarcely terminated
his course of philosophy when, having obtained the situation of
assistant and successor to his father, in his post of valet-d