LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18722, 19 June 1926, Page 13

LITERARY GOSSIP.

When Sir Edmund Gosso and J. C. Squire independently choose the same publication as the subject for their' cnuseries in the Sunday Pross, it may reasonably claim to bo the book of the week (writes H. W. Horwill in an exohango). This distinction is won by "A Chapter in the Early Life of Shakespeare," in which Arthur Gray, Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, propounds an entirely novel theory in Shakespearean biography. The orthodox account of Shakespeare's life between his birth and his appenr.mco in London is admittedly nothing but conjecture Even his education at Stratford Grammar School is a mere guess. Mr Gray conies forward with a different .story to fill this gap. He gives reasons for believing that the young Shakespeare was employed at Polesworth, iu Arden, as a page to that erudite country gentleman, Kir Harry Goodere, who is remembered as the patron of Michael Drayton. In that house he would have access to a library and would be in constant touch with the best iitcrarv and artistic society of the time. From this service at Polesworth tho transition to the dramatic world of London would fto easy and natural.

Mr Gray's arguments in support of his theory are ingenious and plausible, but far from convincing. They are mainly drawn from such facts as that ire characteristic soenery of the plnys suggests Arden rather than South Warwickshire; that their local references are mostly iu the Arden district and that they show an acquaintance with rustic lift rather than with the humours of the small town. Both Sir Edmund Gosse and Mr Squiro find a difficulty in the silence of Drayton. On the Polesworth theory the two posts were closely associated in their boyhood, but'we hear nothing of 'such a .connexion from Drayton himself or from anyone else. If Mr Gray's theory could lie accepted, it would seem to out the ground from, beneath the feet of the Baconians, for it would dispose of the arguments they: base on the improbability of a Stratford butcher's son acquiring the learning and social knowledge required for the writing of the pjays. "No wonder," as Sir Edmund Gosso puts it, "that Shakespearo became what he crew to bo if he was nurtured in the warm elegance .of the most cultured country house in England." Mr Squiro, however, re minds us that all is grist that comes ro the Baconians' mill, and he fear« that Mr Gray's theory will give them something they have- long wanted, for there is evidenco of Bacon's connexion with Polesworth and the Goodere family., .and this would explain how" Bacon and Shakespeare could have met at nn eariy date on a footing sufficiently intimate to enable an arrangement to be mnde for fathering tho plays of tho former upon the latter.

A curious addition to one's collection of Hawthorne material, which canie to light iiv a curious way, has just been published in book form for the first time (says the New York "Times"). It is a story which appeared ill serial "United States Magazine and Democratic Review." The author, who reform in 184G in the now long defunct maincd anonymous, recounted what purported to be his own adventures as a privateer in the war of 1812, and his experiences in Dartmoor Prison. Nathaniel Hawthorne's name appeared as editor. The story is not listed iu any bibliography of. Hawthorne, and might have fain undisturbed forever had it not boon discovered by a Mr Albert Mordell, who thought,■ not tin-, justifiably* that he had _ accidentally happened upon an unpublished Hawthorne novel. In those days, .jis everyone knows, it was far from uncommon for a novelist to pose as the editor of an autobiographical -tale"written by some one else, in order to heighten the illusion. Hawthorne,, who was eight years old in 1812, could hardly have avoided hearing a great deal about the war from seafaring men who had taken part in it; and tho story was evidently not the work of any novice in the art of writing. ; It remained for on© of the_ most carious' of all curious chapters in tho history of coincidences, not to dear up tho mystery, but to render it darker than ever.

M. Mordell brought the supposed Hawthorne novel to I>r. Clifford v Smyth for an opinibn on its,authenticity, and Dr. Smyth, as. he Bays in his preface to the now published edition, took it.home* "with unconcealed jubiliation"; and no wonder. There now enters into the story ah old, mysterious, autograph manuscript which Nathaniel Hawthorne's daughter, the Reverend Mother M. Alphonsa Lathrop, 0.8.D., had given to Dr. Smyth years before. .Without title or author's nanie, without beginning or ending, in another and earlier hand than Hawthorne's, it described somo experiences in which the write* had evidently taken part while a prisoner of war in the,island of Barbados. It had been found among the various other papers belonging to her father, but there was nothing to explain what it was doing there or from what Source it had come. Not to make too long a story of it, it was to this manuscript that Dr. Smyth turned after an examination of th© serial published in the l< Democratic Review." It fitted in, to a nicety; after Chapter V., and the account of the privateer's capture by the British; but the part covered by the manuscript, the Barbados adventure, had been omitted from the serial.

The completed story is hence one of double interest; being a lively and entertaining yarn written about the war of 1812 by an eye-witness and participator, and being surrounded with mystery as to the identity of the author. On the latter head Dr. Smyth quotes the following from a letter received from Miss Rebecca Manning, a cousin of Hawthorne's, who still survives him in Salem:

Hawthorne's grandmother, Miriam (Lord) Manning, had a brother, John Lord, who was taken prisoner by tho British, and confined in Dartmoor Prison.

This may, or may not, shed light on the question of authorship. Miss Manning and other members of the Hawthorne family regard it as extremely unlikely that John Lord is the Dartmoor prisoner in question; and there must be a number of other likely candidates. Perhaps the little gods of coincidence, having done so much, will unbend again at some future tinio and clear the mystery up altogether.

One journalist succeeds another as editor of the Encylopaedia Britanniea. In taking up his appointment to carry on the work of the late Hugh Chisholm J. L. Garvin announces that he will set before himself the deliberate design to restore the international unity among scholars and experts which was broken by the war and has remained too lone and widely interrupted in the peace! He has already seemed promises of assistance, to a larger extent than ever before, from eminent statesmen, historians, scientists, philosophers, and literary critics in all the chief countries.