As a matter of fact the perfection of dramatic song scarcely survived Shakespeare himself. The early Jacobeans, Heywood, Ford, and Dekker in particular, broke out occasionally in delicate ditties. But most playwrights, like Massinger, were persistently pedestrian. The only man who came at all close to Shakespeare as a lyrist was John Fletcher, whose "Lay a garland on my hearse" nobody could challenge if it were found printed first in a Shakespeare quarto. The three great songs in "Valentinian" have almost more splendour than any of Shakespeare's, though never quite the intimate beauty, the singing spontaneity of "Under the greenwood tree" or "Hark, hark, the lark." It has grown to be the habit of anthologists to assert Shakespeare's right to "Roses, their sharp spikes being gone." The mere fact of its loveliness and perfection gives them no authority to do so; and to my ear the rather stately procession of syllables is reminiscent of Fletcher. We shall never be certain; and who would not swear that "Hear, ye ladies that are coy" was by the same hand that wrote "Sigh no more, ladies," if we were not sure of the contrary? But the most effective test, even in the case of Fletcher, is to see whether the trill of song is, or is not, an inherent portion of the dramatic structure of the play. This is the hall-mark of Shakespeare, and perhaps of him alone. CATHARINE TROTTER, THE PRECURSOR OF THE BLUESTOCKINGS The practically complete absence of the Woman of Letters from our tropical and profuse literature of the early and middle seventeenth century has often been observed with wonder. While France had her Madeleine de Scudéry and her Mlle. de Gournay and her Mère Angelique Arnauld, Englishwomen of the Stuart age ventured upon no incursions into philosophy, fiction, or theology. More and more eagerly, however, they read books; and as a consequence of reading, they began at last to write. The precious Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, hob-a-nobbed with every Muse in her amazing divagations. But the earliest professional woman of letters was Aphra Behn, the novelist and playwright, to whose genius justice has only quite lately been done by Mr. Montague Summers. Mrs. Behn died in 1689, and it seemed at first that she had left no heritage to her sex. But there presently appeared a set of female writers, who enlivened the last years of the century, but who were soon eclipsed by the wits of the age of Anne, and who have been entirely forgotten. It is to the most interesting of these "transient phantoms" that I wish to draw attention.