_Brother, 'tis well_ _To have faced a truth however hideous,_ _However humbling. Gladly I discipline_ _My pride by taking back those pettish doubts_ _Cast on the soundness of the central thought_ _In Mr. Hardy's drama. He was right._ _Automata these animalculae_ _Are--puppets, pitiable jackaclocks._ _Be't as it may elsewhere, upon this planet_ _There's no free will, only obedience_ _To some blind, deaf, unthinking despotry_ _That justifies the horridest pessimism._ _Frankly acknowledging all this, I beat_ _A quick but not disorderly retreat._ He re-trajects himself into Space, followed closely by his Chorus, and by the Spirit and Chorus of the Pities, the Spirits Sinister and Ironic with their Choruses, Rumours, Spirit Messengers, and the Recording Angel. SHAKESPEARE AND CHRISTMAS _By_ FR*NK H*RR*S That Shakespeare hated Christmas--hated it with a venom utterly alien to the gentle heart in him--I take to be a proposition that establishes itself automatically. If there is one thing lucid-obvious in the Plays and Sonnets, it is Shakespeare's unconquerable loathing of Christmas. The Professors deny it, however, or deny that it is proven. With these gentlemen I will deal faithfully. I will meet them on their own parched ground, making them fertilise it by shedding there the last drop of the water that flows through their veins. If you find, in the works of a poet whose instinct is to write about everything under the sun, one obvious theme untouched, or touched hardly at all, then it is at least presumable that there was some good reason for that abstinence. Such a poet was Shakespeare. It was one of the divine frailties of his genius that he must be ever flying off at a tangent from his main theme to unpack his heart in words about some frivolous-small irrelevance that had come into his head. If it could be shown that he never mentioned Christmas, we should have proof presumptive that he consciously avoided doing so. But if the fact is that he did mention it now and again, but in grudging fashion, without one spark of illumination--he, the arch-illuminator of all things--then we have proof positive that he detested it. I see Dryasdust thumbing his Concordance. Let my memory save him the trouble. I will reel him off the one passage in which Shakespeare spoke of Christmas in words that rise to the level of mediocrity. Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallowed and so gracious is the time.