her as an insane person and notified the American Minister, then James Buchanan. She was sent home, placed in an asylum, where a few months later, she died.

Her life seemed an even more complete failure than that of her father.

The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded had few readers but it was reviewed, and rather brutally, by some of the critics of the English press, who looked upon it as an assault upon the great master of English literature, which, indeed, it was from their point of view. These criticisms were reprinted in this country where there was no word in defense of its author.

But it startled some people into thinking as they had never thought before. Delia Bacon had hit the bull'seye of the controversy when she courageously flung into the teeth of Thomas Carlyle the assertion that no one could know the meaning of the plays of Shakespeare "who believed that 'that booby' wrote them." Carlyle's shriek of laughter might have been heard a mile, but her challenge went further.

This is neither the time nor place for a discussion of the merits of the Shakespeare controversy. I do not call it the Shakespeare-Bacon or the Shakespeare-Marlowe controversy, for it is primarily the Case of the Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon, as he is known to us after centuries of the most careful and minute research, versus the awe-inspiring creature of our imagination to whom for centuries we have attributed the authorship of what are everywhere admitted to be the greatest dramatic compositions to be found in any language!

When Delia Bacon died, a victim of her own emotional enthusiasm, she stood alone in her advocacy of

Vol. XXXII— 39.

what she conceived to be the truth, and in justice to her memory I must remind you that if she were alive today she would have much and excellent company. In evidence of this I will cite a few words from those whose opinions will command attention.

In a description of Stratford published in 1645, there occurs the following:

"Stratford owes all its glory to two of its sonsJohn, Archbishop of Canterbury, who built a church there; and Hugh Clopton, who built at his own cost a bridge of fourteen arches across the Avon."

The church referred to is that containing Shakespeare's tomb and also those of the Clopton family. The citation is evidence that twenty-nine years after his death, and twenty-two years after the publication of the complete, first folio edition of his works, Shakespeare was not considered an asset in the town in which he was born and which today, with its near ten thousand inhabitants, lives and feeds upon his memory. Evidently the "myth" had not yet started on its triumphant way.

Lord Palmerston, famous English statesman and prime minister, said: "I rejoice to see the reintegration of Italy, the unveiling of the mystery of China, and the explosion of the Shakespeare illusions."

John Bright, of whom Lord Salisbury said, "He was the greatest master of English oratory that this generation I may say several generations — has seen,' declared that any man that believed that William Shakespeare wrote "Hamlet" or "King Lear" was a fool.

Bismarck said in 1892 that he "could not understand how it were possible that a man, however gifted with

the intuitions of genius, could have written what is attributed to Shakespeare unless he had been in touch with the great affairs of state, behind the scenes of political life, and also intimate with all the social courtesies and refinements of thought, which in Shakespeare's time were only to be met with in the highest circles."

In the Cambridge History of English Literature, issued in 1910 from the very heart of conservative England, we have the following regarding Shakespeare:

"We do not know the identity of Shakespeare's father; we are by no means certain of the identity of his wife. We do not know whether he ever went to school. No biography of Shakespeare, therefore, which deserves any confidence, has ever been constructed without a large infusion of the tell-tale words "apparently," "probably," "there can be little doubt," and no small infusion of the still more tell-tale “perhaps," "it would be natural," "according to what was usual at the time," etc., etc.

* * *

Mark Twain, in 1911, wrote of Shakespeare (whom he characterized as "just a Tar Baby"): "About him you can find nothing; We can go to the records and find out the life history of every renowned race horse of modern times - but not Shakespeare's. There are many reasons for this but there is one worth all the rest put together; he hadn't any history to tell!

There is no way of getting round that deadly fact. And no sane way has yet been discovered of getting round its formidable significance!"

Henry Watterson, of whom no one can deny the possession of rare scholarly and literary insight, declared:

"The man who can believe that William Shakespeare, of Stratford-on-Avon, wrote the dramas that stand in his name, could believe that Benedict Arnold wrote the Declaration of Independence and Herbert Spencer the novels of Dickens."

And Henry James wrote, "I am sort of haunted by the conviction that the divine William was the biggest and most successful Fraud ever practiced on a patient world."

Citations of similar views might be extended almost indefinitely, but these are enough for my purpose.

No belief or doctrine, other than a few religious dogmas, has ever rooted itself more deeply in the human mind than this faith in Shakespeare as the author of the plays published over his name. His tomb has become a shrine, at which all nations worship and an invisible monument of huge dimensions has been erected to his memory. But some of those who, in recent years. have contributed most generously to its building, are now ready to acknowledge the weakness of its foundation.

Should it ever fall, and there are many who believe that it must fall in the not distant future, it will not be forgotten that the first assault upon it was made by Delia Bacon, born in a log cabin in the Town of Tallmadge.

CORNSTALK, THE INDIAN CHIEF*

BY MRS. ORSON D. DRYER

"Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top,

When the wind blows the cradle will rock."

A certain queer little cradle, hanging from a limb of a tree, in a great green forest, about the year 1720, is rocking to and fro as the soft, summer wind sways the branches above it.

It is a gay and pretty cradle, soft and warm with the skin of the moose, and gorgeous with bird feathers and brightly colored quills of the porcupine, and from it shine out the black eyes of a little red-rown baby which look out upon the beautiful Scioto valley, filled with the sound of dashing waters, whispering leaves and singing birds.

So the little Indian swings, to and fro, making friends with the birds and squirrels and learning many things.

As soon as he can toddle about his father, who is a mighty hunter, becomes his teacher, making for him a little bow and arrow winged with eagle feathers. The boy soon learns how to use and make them; as he grows older he learns to paddle a canoe where the river is swiftest, and in the hunt he is fleet of foot. He grows tall and straight and is given the Indian name of Keigh

* Address at annual meeting of the Ohio State Archæological and Historical Society, September 19, 1923.