Frenchmen at Verdun, that he was only a scapegoat. He was not the young fire-eater who prated of a merry, joyous war, and whose favorite watchword was 'Steadily forward.' No! They say the lonely prince at Wieringen was the most true, loyal friend of peace, that he was ready to restore Alsace and Lorraine to France as far back as 1914-just to get peace! His propagandists now claim he would be a genial, constitutional, liberal monarch, like King George of England, and that as soon as his beloved papa is out of the way, he will publish some memoirs which will not only astound the world, but prove beyond question that he, the Crown Prince, never wanted a war and is spotlessly innocent of its outbreak. Truly, the world will wait with intense interest for these memoirs!

Simultaneously, there is an organized campaign against France. During the Leipzig Fair-what a magnificent sight for the foreign visitors!-a crowd of local patriots marched through the streets with black, white, and red banners, singing: 'Siegrich wollen wir Frankreich schlagen.' (We shall march to victory over France.)

After the results of the vote in Upper Silesia were received, a German mob at Oppeln sang the same challenging song. A disarmament commission was received with this song, and threatened and insulted, in the vicinity of Hamburg. Colonel Reinhardt is preaching revenge in Berlin, and a German National member of the Reichstag, Wulle, declared at a public meeting: 'France is, in fact, a worse offender than we are, but it is not permissible to say this.'

And what shall we say of the Reichstag? The only sensible men in that body sit on the left, among the majority Social Democrats and

the Independent Socialists. But so long as this wave of chauvinism is sweeping through the land, honest Democrats and Republicans can accomplish nothing. We French made a great mistake immediately after Germany's defeat, in not supporting the radical parties by every means in our power. Today we are suffering for that blunder. Before the elections last June, we might perhaps have reached an amicable settlement with the Germans. Today that seems impossible. We can never come to terms with the reactionary rulers now in the saddle, who owe their influence entirely to Germany's foreign problems. The crisis is acute. Is Fehrenbach's phantom cabinet to retire? Who would then take up its duties? The present composition of the Reichstag prevents peace not only abroad, but also at home. The existing members can not rally a Republican majority strong enough to carry on alone without compromises with the Conservatives. For this reason the Center party is already discussing the possibility of a new election. But I doubt whether an appeal to the country would do any good in the present period of superheated nationalism.

The first step in imposing the sanctions intended to bring the Germans to reason and make them fulfil the obligations has already been taken. However, it is only a beginning. The sanctions as planned by the Supreme Council will be applied in successive stages. We shall see what the next step is after the first of May. Under the Treaty, the Germans must comply with the demands of the Reparation Commission before that date. A person does not need to know much about this country to realize that what the Entente asks

will not be granted. So now we must resort to further punitive measures. In what direction? Apparently we shall occupy the Ruhr district. Perhaps we will proced to take possession also of Essen, Frankfurt, and Mannheim. It is possible likewise that we shall apply measures in the Rhine countries looking toward making them more autonomous than at present both in respect to their government and to their industry and commerce. However, prophecy is still uncertain; for the Allies will not decide upon their next move until they have a final answer from Germany.

I will not be betraying any confidence to the Germans in saying that the Allies know perfectly well what the actual situation is in Germany. For that reason they may adopt some kind of a compulsory administration. All sincere friends of the peace will naturally deplore

such a contingency. Easter, which ought to be a festival of good will, promises this year to be at best but an anniversary in an armed peace.

Under such conditions, how can we discuss a moral disarmament of Germany, which is far more important than military disarmament? So long as the country does not voluntarily lay aside its mental armor, so long as the reparation question is regarded merely from the stand point of military defeat, and not from the standpoint of a moral duty and a holy obligation of the German people to repair the injury they did at the command of blind and criminal leaders, so long as they refuse to recognize this duty and obligation and make it an inviolable plank in their public policy— the world will not have peace. Until then, we shall have too much of sanctions and penalties and the like, and too little of that working together which alone heals the wounds of war.

CONGREVE's principal continental critic has remarked that literary history has behaved towards him in a very stepmotherly fashion (sehr stiefmutterlich). There is no other English poet of equal rank of the last two centuries and a half whose biography has been so persistently neglected. When, in 1888, I wrote my Life of Congreve I had had no predecessor since John Oldmixon, masquerading under the pseudonym of 'Charles Wilson', published that farrago of lies and nonsense which he called Memoirs of The Life, Writings and Amours of William Congreve,

Esq., in 1730. In this kingdom of the blind, however one-eyed, I continue to be king, since in the thirtythree years succeeding the issue of my biography no one has essayed to do better what I did as well as I could. The only exception is the William Congreve, sein Leben und seine Lustspiele, published in 1897 by Dr. D. Schmid, who was, I believe, and perhaps still is, a professor in the university of Graz in Austria. I darted, full of anticipation, to the perusal of Dr. Schmid's volume, but was completely disappointed. He reposes upon me with a touching

uniformity; he quotes me incessantly and with courteous acknowledgment; but I am unable to discover in his whole monograph one grain of fact, or correction of fact, not known to me in 1888.

In spite of this, I have always believed that someone with more patience and skill than I possess would be able to add much to our knowledge of a man who lived with the Pope and Swift and Addison of whom we know so much. The late George A. Aitken, who seemed to carry about with him a set of Röntgen rays which he applied to the members of the Age of Anne, would have been the man to do it. Not very long before his lamented death I urged the task upon Aitken; but his mind. was set on other things, on Prior in particular. I do not know why it is that Congreve, one of the great dramatists of the world, perhaps our greatest social playwright, seems to lack personal attractiveness. It is a scandal that he has never been edited. His plays are frequently, but always imperfectly reprinted, and without any editorial care. I was rejoiced to see that Mr. Montague Summers, than whom no one living is more competent to carry out such a labour, proposed to edit Congreve's plays. But even he did not intend to include the poems, the novel, or the letters; and I have heard no more of his project. To the book-collector the folio publications of Congreve in verse are precious and amusing, but they have never attracted the notice of a bibliographer. Scholarship has, indeed, been stiefmutterlich towards Congreve, as the Austrian critic said.

My excuse for recalling this subject is the fact that I am able, through the kindness of Mr. Thos. J. Wise, to announce the existence of a work by

Congreve hitherto unknown and unsuspected in its original form. In the matchless library of Mr. Wise there lurks an anonymous quarto of which the complete title is: 'An Impossible Thing. A Tale. London: Printed: And Sold by J. Roberts in Warwick-Lane, MDCCXX.' This was shown by Mr. Wise to several of our best authorities, who combined in the conjecture that it must be a hitherto unknown work by Prior. Yet since Congreve's death-and this shows how little anybody reads himthe contents of Mr. Wise's quarto have appeared in each successive edition of the poems. But before this was perceived the truth had dawned upon Mr. Wise, who, turning over the Historical Account of the English Poels, a publication by Curll in 1720, found that the following entry occurs in the 'Corrigenda':

Mr. Congreve. This Gentleman has lately oblig'd us with two Tales from Fontaine, entitled,

I. The Impossible Thing.

II. The Man That Lost his Heifer. These form his pamphlet of the same year, 1720. When Mr. Wise was kind enough to point this out to me it was only left for me to add that the anonymous Historical Account was the work of Giles Jacob, the friend whose notes on Congreve's life form the nucleus of all we know about him. Thus the authorship of the two poems was proved. And it was only after that proof that I turned to the index of the old editions and found there the two poems, lurking unsuspected. I blush to recall the painful incident.

However, the separate publication of the two poems in a quarto of 1720 is is a wholly unrecorded fact, and important to bibliographers. The Peasant in Search of his Heifer is added

apparently as an afterthought, to fill up the sheet. An Impossible Thing opens with these lines:

Both as a Critick and a Friend.
I tell it with some Variation
(Not altogether a Translation)
From La Fontaine; an Author,
Dick,

Whose Muse would touch thee to

the quick.

The Subject is of that same kind To which thy Heart seems most inclin❜d.

How Verse may alter it, God
knows;

Thou lov'st it well, I'm sure, in
Prose.

So without Preface, or Pretence, To hold thee longer in Suspense, I shall proceed, as I am able, To the Recital of my Fable. He does proceed, not without considerable indelicacy, but in excellent running verse. The "Dick" who was to enjoy it I conjecture-and in this Mr. Austin Dobson confirms me-to have been Richard Shelton, who is connected with Prior's Alma and A Case Stated. Prior and Congreve have so much in common that it is tantalising not to be able to persuade them to throw light upon one another; they were haunting the same coffeehouses when Swift was writing to Stella in 1710.

The discovery, after 200 years, of a unique copy of an unsuspected separate publication by Congreve confirms a suspicion of mine that other such pamphlets may exist. The earliest attempt at a bibliography was made by Giles Jacob, evidently under the poet's own eye, in 1720. Jacob gives a list of poems, with which the ingenious Mr. Congreve, besides his excellent Dramatick Works, has oblig'd

of each of which we possess the text in folio form. But of the Epistle to Halifax no separate edition is known, and it appears first in the octavo of 1710. But I cannot help suspecting that Giles Jacob possessed, or could refer to, a folio sheet of (probably) 1694, the year in which Halifax, to reward Congreve for the dedication of The Double Dealer, is supposed to have appointed him a Commissioner for licensing hackney-coaches. But I have shown how confused is all the evidence with regard to Congreve's offices, which roused Thackeray to such superfluous indignation. Perhaps the shilly-shallying of Charles Montague had something to do with the suppression of an original folio of the Epistle, if it ever existed. In any case, a single sheet with, or more likely without, the signature of Mr. Congreve is worth looking for.

As thirty-three years have passed since my Life of Congreve was published I venture to take occasion to mention here one or two slight matters which I should like any possessors of that volume to interpolate. If I had the opportunity to issue a new edition. I should further enlarge on a matter which I did make prominent, the very leading part which the veteran Dryden took in advancing the fortunes. of his young and hitherto unknown. rival. The episode is a charming one, and I have now some instances of it which escaped me in 1888. As is known, Congreve came up from the country some time in 1692. He was introduced by Southerne to Dryden, who took a great fancy to him at once. Dryden was preparing a composite translation of Juvenal, and

he gave the young man the Eleventh Satire to turn. Next came Dryden's Persius, to which Congreve prefixed a splendid poem of compliment: the triumph of The Old Bachelor followed in January. All this, and more, I worked out; but one very interesting evidence of Dryden's assiduous kindness escaped me. In 1705 was published as a folio pamphlet the Ode on Mrs. Arabella Hunt singing, and I supposed that this was the original appearance of this pindaric, which is one of Congreve's best. But my

attention has been arrested by observing that 1705 was the year in which Arabella Hunt died, and also that so early as 1693 Dryden published this ode in his Third Miscellany. The Arabella Hunt ode therefore belongs to the beginning, and not, as I supposed, to the close, of Congreve's brief poetic career. It is a beautiful thing:

Let all be hushed, each softest

motion cease;

Be every loud

thought at peace;

tempestuous

And every ruder gasp of breath Be calm, as in the arms of Death, and ends with a Keats-like couplet: Wishing forever in that state to lie,

For ever to be dying so, yet never die.

It is now plain that this ode was published as a book at the death of the singer, but had been composed at least twelve years earlier. Another instance of Dryden's connection with Congreve, which I observed too late to record it, is the fact that the latter contributed a song to the Love Triumphant of the former in 1694. In the dedication of that play Dryden speaks of 'my most ingenious friend, Mr. Congreve,' who has observed 'the mechanic unities' of time and space

strictly. Love Triumphant was Dryden's last play, and its failure was complete. A spiteful letter-writer of the time gloats over its damnation because it will 'vex huffing Dryden and Congreve to madness.' All this confirms the idea that the elder poet's complaisance in the younger was matter of general knowledge, and Dryden's withdrawal from the ungrateful theatre must have been a blow to Congreve, who, however, practically stepped at once into Dryden's shoes.

Another biographical crumb. Charles Hopkins, one of the poet-sons of Ezekiel Hopkins, the once-famous Bishop of Derry, was a protégé of Dryden, and in 1697 brought out his second play, Boadicea, which he dedicated to Congreve in a long poem, from which we learn that Hopkins was an intimate friend and disciple of the author of The Double Dealer:

You taught me first my Genius and my Power,

Taught me to know my own, but

gave me more.

He praises Congreve's verses, and then goes on to say, in lines of conspicuous warmth and sincerity:

Nor does your Verse alone our
Passions move,

Beyond the Poet, we the Person
love.

In you, and almost only you, we find

Sublimity of Wit and Candour of the Mind.

Both have their Charms, and both give that delight.

'Tis pity that you should, or should not write.

He proceeds, enthusiastically, in this strain, and closes at last in words which still carry a melodious echo: Here should I, not to tire your patience, end,