5 DECEMBER 1952, Page 5

Puella Rigensis. This young woman gets elderlier and elderlier. Last

week I gave circumstantial details (on the basis of information received), of how the Latin version had been composed by a Rossall master in 1912 or 1913. Now Mr. Leslie Gamage writes to say that in 1902, when he was at Marlborough, a master there spoke of having heard the lines in his own youth—which takes the effort back to well into the last century. I am getting resigned to the idea of its having in fact been perpetrated by Bacon, as a relief from the bore- dom of writing essays. (He probably wrote the English version first.)