THREE PET-THEORY BOOKS
Notes and Queries on the Origin of British Israel. By gENERAL HICRSON'R book is quite readable, though he ride's his intellectual hobby for a fall. ' Not content with the familiar assumption that Shakespeare was Bacon he would pervade us that he was "a son'of Queen Elitalieth by Leicester ! -Land thin " the list of the Tudors." In ptirstiiior his fiat-Cis he takes his readers into some interesting by-ways of history' and literature. It is the sort of book which we can imagine the bibliophile of the future prizing very highly as a literary curiosity.
We had not realized that the refusal to believe that Shakes- .. peare wrote his plays was shared by some of his Continental critics. The Cypher Inscription beneath the Bust of William Shakespeare, however, is a pamphlet apparently written by a . Dutchman, elaborating the assertion that " this monument is a mystification of Francis Bacon Lord Verulam, who concealed therein his authorship as Shakespeare:" Two cypher methods are involved, it would seem, in this " mystification," the first of which we are told was adopted by Julius 0:.e -ar, tie. second being a development of the same extended by Tithem- T ins. The explanation of their application is confining in the extreme, but no doubt with time and patience Mr. Speck. man's method could be mastered.
The question of " who we were " interests every family and •• every race. It is this natural and laudable curiosity, perhaps, Aich has inclined some able and patriotic people to • give ear to the preaching of those who have convinced ' themselves of the Israelitish origin of the English race. Such ; believers will find Lady Radnor's Notes and Queries worth study. " If that is true then the Bible is all about us," said a little girl, who had overheard talk on the subject, to Lady Radnor. The comment has very wide bearings, and throws :. alight upon more- " origins " than' one. These books have . this in common ; they illustrate the astonishingly, convincing eyidence that can be gathered to support any theory, pro-{ vided that a blind eye is, turned to all the evidence and; established tradition which carry conviction that the theory is wrong.
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