REPORT ON COMPETITION NO. 26 SHAKESPEARE has been described as

" the most complete man who ever lived." Readers were invited to suggest the name of the most complete woman,. and to give their reasons. This was a most interesting competition to judge, both for the variety of names submitted and even more for the reasons given to support them. Three Queens—Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth, and H.M. Queen Mary—headed the list. Next came Madame Curie, with Madame de Sevigne and Jane Welsh Carlyle not far behind. A few voted for Mrs. Beeton, Elizabeth Fry, Mary Somerville, and Georges Sand. George Eliot, Mary Baker Eddy, Elizabeth Browning, Elizabeth of Bohemia and Dame Mary Scharlieb received one vote each..

Adjudication was interesting but confusing, so various were the explanations of what completeness in woman entailed. Mr. Allan M. Laing submitted a witty entry, in imitation of Earle summarising the necessary characteristics : THE COMPLEAT WOMAN is she who in her own person contrives best to be a Microcosm of Womanhood. She is the com- plement of her Husband, a soft cushion for his Angles, a sharp elbow for his Languor. Comely she should be, but not beautiful, for Benity is apt to triumph at the expense of Intelligence. She is no male mind in Petticoats, and to call her Blue Stocking were libellous. Yet is she wise after her Fashion, and witty withal; else were she no fit Helpmate for her Husband. Her wits are not so exhausted by her social occasions that she findeth no Exercise for them in the Proper Ordering of a Houshold, and the provision of Material Comfort for her guests, as well as her own Decent Adornment. Good humoured at bottom, her Como'eatness doth not preclude her from the acidities of feminine Impulse; and an Excessive Taste for Speech is her Due. That she preferreth the Company of the Male is natural, yet is she not unhappy or un- loved in the society of Sensible Persons of her own Sex. She has weaknesses. Tantrums and vapours; an occasional cruelty; Un- reason that bewildereth; without these would she be no Woman, Mother, Wife, Nurse, Companion, Servant, Lover : in a word, the Compleat Woman. Lord send she be not wasted on the Compleat Man!

He suggested that this applied to Jane Welsh Carlyle. His entry had, as usual, to be considered for a prize, but for once he must be content with a commendation. The first prize goes to M. G. M., and the second to H. C. Minchin. Apart from those whose entries are printed, Catherine Carswell (Queen Victoria), Leo Barnard (Queen Victoria) and E. M. Keate (George Eliot) are commended.

First Prize.

MADAME DE SEVIGNE.

Madame de Sevigne seems a good example of " the most com- plete woman." She was a wife and a mother, and had therefore been through the normal experiences of womanhood. She possessed a charm which still radiates from her letters, and which brought her hosts of friends and admirers. She was as much beloved by women as by men. Though she enjoyed the gaieties and gossip of Paris she was not dependent upon them, but had many resources in herself. She could spend long months in the country, content in winter with a book by the fireside, happy in spring and summer planning her garden, or rambling in the woods. She was well educated, and widely read. Her tender heart overflowed with sympathy for the trials and sorrows of her friends, whom she never abandoned in adversity. Life had taught her philosophy, and re- signation, and she was often sad, but she had a delicious and unconquerable gaiety of spirit which must have made her the most delightful of companions. Above all her sense of humour gave her a balanced and tolerant outlook upon the weaknesses and follies of mankind. And if sometimes her heart got the better of her head, as in her devotion to her daughter, is not that also a characteristic of the complete woman? M. G. M. Second Prize. QUEEN VICTORIA.

Starting from Johnson's definition of complete—" perfect : full: having no deficiencies "—we may hesitate to apply it even to M.: "myriad-minded" Shakespeare. But using the term approxi- mately, Queen Victoria may well be considered " the most com- plete woman " who has ever lived. On the domestic side a happy and devoted wife, she was the mother of numerous able and gifted sons and daughters, whom she lived to see carrying on tradi- tions which she herself had amplified and ennobled. As the mother of a family no woman could have led a fuller life, and. allowing for the limitations incidental to humanity, could have led it better or more consistently.

In public life she was a force, not a figurehead. Sixty years and more a sovereign, her position was, when the extent of her realm is considered, nothing less than tremendous. A hard and constant worker, she did not permit the private griefs- and trials which bent but could not break her to deflect her from the path of duty. Day after day she devoted profound attention to affairs of state, upon which she insisted on being supplied with the fullest information available. She became a counsellor with whose wisdom her ministers neither wished nor were able to dispense. Her eminence and qualities were recognised and resoected in every Chancellery of Europe. Her life was rounded off, completed, by

the devotion of her subjects. H. C. MiNcling.

Commended. GEORGES SAND.

The amazing range and depth of Shakespeare's humanity could not be known without the record of his plays. There he expresses himself as man and woman, saint and sinner, young and old, grave and gay and obscene, learned and lewd, noble and simple. The sonnets, and his meagre biography, bear out the record : of pasiion- ate love towards man and woman, of lust and shame, and the enduring attachment to things of home; how he frequented. courts, and yet was a "good mixer" in the tavern.

If women, and other men, have been equally " complete," we can only know of it through literary records. But by the time spinsters ceased to be also spinners, and before married women learned neo-Malthusianism, convention began to set narrower• limits to their range of human contacts. The Wife of Bath and. her ilk had not leisure nor learning to demonstrate their completeness; Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, had not social oppor- tunity to develop theirs.

So, marshalling candidates, from Heloise to Queen Victoria, from Harriet Beecher Stowe to St. Catherine of Siena, perhaps Georges Sand deserves the palm. Her men, her children, and her women when not Dupont idealized, are real and various. Her psychologi- cal insight, sharp as a needle, owes nothing to Freud. Like Shake- speare, she was of the province and the capital; knew intimately the peasant, the bourgeois and the artist; she too lived to mature age, and cared for family as well as lovers. Hers was indeed a comprehensive humanity. SYLVIA ANTHONY.

ELIZABETH FRY.

Of all the women who lived and who in memoirs, history and legends still live, Elizabeth Fry appears the most complete. • She was both sweet and great, both courageous and modest, and loved very dearly in her family as well as outside it. She was not born perfect, but she lived to be complete. To make the full circle of her mature qualities she found religion for herself, a consciousness of social duties, and self-control, to intersupplement the intellect, charm, position and free Quakerism which she inherited. Did you know that she had many suitors before she was nineteen, and that she had six sisters and four brothers all of whom confided in her? Yet her journal often shows distress at her own weakness and spiritual lethargy; and, when she married, she took very much to heart the censures of the plain Quakers of her husband's circle, on her beautiful manners and even on her children's behaviour. Notwithstanding Elizabeth persisted in deepening her faith and in meeting ill-health and the fears of child-birth with courage and fortitude, so that when stronger times came she had a natural spiritual force for the work which waited. In a very feminine way she gradually extended the sympathy her family knew beyond them into prisons and convict-ships. Her spontaneous actions set reforms moving. They were all woman's affairs—children, nursing, sewing, cleanliness—so that, as her activities widened till her death, she became more and more the complete woman. D. BARTON.

MADAME CURIE.

Madame Curie had all the womanly attributes. She was attrac- tive, and was the wife of a man who was as clever, or possibly in his own way cleverer than herself, so that they were companions in a true sense. She knew the pangs and joys of motherhood, she was a linguist and a writer. She created not only with her body, but with her brain as well, a condition of things which is very often denied to her sex. Madame Curie knew the- troubles of poverty (she very often did not know where the next meal would come from), and also suffered the troubles of fame. For troubles they were to her, she was shy by nature, and she found it difficult to " suffer fools gladly." She travelled, and so had an opportunity of seeing other peoples and other lands. She was gifted in so many ways, and yet was never conceited, her humiIty over her discoveries was unique. Both her husband, and herself, put the need of humanity before their personal wants, or desires for fame, and worked together to that end. She suffered grief through the loss of her husband, but she was able to realize the result of their labours during her lifetime. She lived a full mental and physical life, which

to my mind was that of a " complete woman." " TEMPUS."