Book Reviews

THE FOURTH PHYSICIAN: MONTGOMERY PICKETT. A. C. McClurg and Company, Chicago, Illinois. 1911. Price, $1.00.

The Fourth Physician is a little novel which is full of psychological and sociological interest, but which is so fascinating in its style and so interesting in its theme that it is only after we have laid it aside that we realize its depth and its meaning. It is a beautiful Christmas story, but it is a story which is more than beautiful. It is a novel, but it is something more than a novel. It is timely at this Christmas season, and it will be timely at all Christmas seasons.

It is an expansion of a play by the same author and of the same title which recently won the first place in a great dramatic contest conducted by The Chicago Tribune, in which eleven hundred contestants were enterd, and concerning which the well-known author and critic Elia W. Peattie so aptly said that "A mystic note of worship and humanitarianism is struck which reaches somehow down to the roots of the emotions. It deals with men of science and men of faith, and it depicts graphically and dramatically a spiritual conflict into which they are drawn, the issue of the contest providing a situation of moving power and impressive beauty."

Such books are perennial because the emotions which they betray and the inspiration which they furnish are perennial. The work, indeed, tho a novel has more than the ordinary novel's value, and is of real psychological and sociological interest. Back of the science of sociology are human lives and human motivs, and these the book portrays in all their tragic pettiness and in all their godlike beauty. It is the story of a fashionable city physician who is taught at last how to heal himself. It is the story of one who in saving others learned how to save his own soul. Its climax is to be found in the words of a faithful negro servant of the old school who, tho droll and ebon-hued, had had reveald to him the mysteries of The Great, The Fourth Physician, "Can't you see, sah? You wah de patient, an' you am healed!"

It is a doctor's book, but it belongs to us all. It depicts with merciless accuracy the sordid selfishness of a fashionable physician, but it also depicts the abnegation of the profession. The author heard of and was fild with admiration for a well known physician. who with faith and courage fought out and won a seemingly hopeless

battle against deth, and with the help of a faithful nurse who was equally devoted and brave, saved the life of a little child. The incident, however, suggested a larger and a bigger thought, the thought of Christmastide, the thought that human professions and callings are only ennobled as they serv, and that the "little one" to whom the "cup of cold water" should be given is not the child of the wellto-do alone, but of the tenement and of the slums also.

The climax of the book is the supreme revelation which sooner or later comes to every great physician, to every great lawyer, to every great teacher and to every great man, that whosoever saveth his life will lost it, and that oftentimes the sacrifice of welth and ambition and influence but opens a way so that the Kingdom of God may enter and be enthroned.

College of Law,

University of North Dakota

A. A. BRUCE

THE BI-LITERAL CYPHER OF SIR FRANCIS BACON, Discovered in his works and Deciphered by MRS. ELIZABETH Wells Gallup. Part III, "THE LOST MANUSCRIPTS." Howard Publishing Company, Detroit, Michigan. Gay and Hancock, Limited, London. pp. 234. Price, $2.00.

This new contribution of deciferd material from editions of the works of Francis Bacon publisht from 1622 to 1671 form a volume much like Part I, bearing the same general title, put out in 1900. The book is not generally known or accredited as authoritativ as the statements are contradictory to accepted history, and persons not having masterd the art of decifering cannot verify the work. It is to be hoped that the appearance of this new volume will bring about a careful investigation and that painstaking work on the part of thoro research students may give us many deciferers in place of one.

To aid would-be-deciferers there is added to the book as an introductory primer facsimile pages of the chapter on cifers from Bacon's de Augmentis Scientiarum, London, 1623, and Paris, 1624, also the translation of Gilbert Wats, 1640, and that of Spedding, Ellis, and Heath containing the bi-literal cifer which Bacon invented in his youth and here gave out forty-five years later as of the highest degree of cifer fully described and applied to script for use in correspondence. It occurd to Mrs. Gallup that perhaps he might have used it in the mixt type of his time and she applied herself for months to the study of the italics of the 1623 Folio of Shakespeare's works and made her

wonderful discovery. Illustrativ examples are given showing the method of extracting the cifer messages from pages of the 1623 and 1632 Folios of Shakespeare's works, Bacon's Novum Organum, 1620, and Spenser's Complaints, 1591.

It appears that Bacon taught cifering but left the method of decifering to be acquired by the inductiv method. This would seem to be Mrs. Gallup's greatest contribution, since she alone has masterd the art. Continuing in the work for the last fifteen years, she has been able to decifer sixty-one books, giving us over 600 pages. Much of the deciferd story from editions before Bacon's deth is made up of repetitions of the sercrets of the life of Queen Elizabeth, her husband the Earl of Leicester and their two sons, Francis Bacon and Robert, Earl of Essex. William Rawley after Bacon's deth confirms the statements of his late master and also tells how he cared for the manuscripts of the works which were put out under the masksSpenser, Peele, Greene, Marlowe, Burton and Shakespeare.

Bacon states that one of the purposes of the bi-literal cifer was to guide and teach a greater cifer the key-word cifer. This third volume contains most important lists of keys and directions for the word cifer which were omitted from the former volumes. With these it may be possible to reconstruct with some degree of certainty the work of Dr. O. W. Owen. If sufficient, this will prove a most valuable contribution and furnish a great field for research. It is to be regretted that the book has not full explanatory notes and all references necessary to follow the cifer in the original editions, but on the other hand, for the general reader it would be more acceptable if the statements were culd and the spelling modernized. The illustrations are a pleasing addition but could have been much more useful to the student if facsimile plates had been made as the differences. in the letters of the inscriptions do not carry in the process used. Mrs. Gallup gives us a very interesting account of her search for the manuscripts, but it does not seem final, and when this new language can be speld out for all, a more exhaustiv search will be demanded.

The editor has kindly introduced us to the author by a prefatory biografy and her picture. We cannot escape a verdict-either the Howard Publishing Company are perpetrating the most monstrous literary fraud of the century, or Mrs. Gallup has found the wondrous work of a super-man, and is able to restore it. The problem before us is not the consideration of all this, or the rethreshing of the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy, but first the verification of the decifering of the vast amount of material in cifer signed by Bacon, Rawley,

Dugdale and others in the editions of books from 1579 to 1679 publisht under the names of Spenser, Peele, Greene, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Bacon, and Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy." When once the material is proved to be genuin, we shall be redy for the historian and the literary critic to weigh and use or reject as he must.

Speculations as to the truth of the statements, the purpose of the author or the use to us of a change of belief, etc., are not to the point. The first volumes have been put in the museums or markt "Reserved" and relegated to a book prison. To-day this new volume is before us and it is time that those who speak with authority at our seats of learning look into this work which seems to have taken sixteen years of painstaking labor on the part of a sane research student. ANNA A. SCHRYVER

Ann Arbor, Michigan

THE OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRI, Part VIII. Edited, with Translations and Notes by ARTHUR S. HUNT. Seven plates. Egypt Exploration Fund, London, 1911. Price, $6.25: to Subscribers, $5.00.

The Egypt Exploration Fund has placed the learned world under further obligation by the publication of another volume under the Graeco-Roman branch. The present volume, the eleventh under this series, is the eighth collection that has appeared of the Oxyrhynchus papyri under the editorship of Doctors Grenfell and Hunt. This eleventh volume includes nine theological fragments, eight new classical texts, bits from ten extant secular authors, and sixty-six non-literary pieces.

Valuable is a fourth century vellum fragment of the Latin Bible from Gen. v-vi, showing twenty-five lines on each side, recto and verso, of the leaf. This find is of more than usual value since our present Vulgate text is for about half of the Old Testament the sole authority, the Old Latin being imperfectly known. Two brief third century fragments from the Septuagint follow, Ex. xxxi, xxxii, xl, interesting for occasional agreements with Cod. A. as against Cod. B.—The verso of one of these fragments (No. 1075), which, by the way, is part of a roll and not from a book, shows the opening verses of the Apocalypse-late third or fourth century. The text inclines to that of Cod. A. rather than of Cod. B. Other theological fragments are bits of Heb. ix and Rev. iii, iv (vellum). A vellum leaf of the sixth century gives a new recension of Tobit ii, the text not agreeing thruout with either or B A. In parallel

colums the editor presents the three texts with the Vulgate for comparativ study. Of curious interest is an amulet fashiond from a bit of vellum showing Matt. iv. 23f. The writing is arranged in five colums, each colum written in crux form, three crosses in each column except the third, where a human bust takes the place of the middle cross. The crosses in the outside colums are surrounded each by a border. The fragment is further decorated by cutting notches from between the colums as if by folding the leaf over and notching with the shears. Mention should be made also of the valuable plates at the close of the volume enabling the student to make some first-hand studies for himself. Finally there is a portion of a Gnostic gospel, possibly, as suggested by Professor Swete, the Valentinian Gosepl of Truth (Iren., C. Haer. iii 11. 9).

Some reality is given to the philosopher of Megalopolis, Cercidas, by the finding of fragments of a roll giving portions of two of his poems. Cercidas urges the supremacy of Fate, before whom even Zeus is impotent. Under the guise of an earthly triad-"Paean," "Giving," and "Retribution"-the writer pleads for help for the needy in body and soul and punishment for evil doers. Other second century fragments include a bit from a satyric drama and portions from the Atlantis of Hellanicus and the Hadrian and Antinous of Pancrates. There are scholia on the Iliad (ii, vii) dating to the first century, and an Alexandrian chronicle of the third century. Among extant authors are to be mentiond Hesiod, Bacchylides, Herodotus, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Vergil (ii, cent iv), and a Greek paraphrase of Vergil (a bilingual word-list).

The new volume is rich in non-literary documents ranging in date from A. D. 1 (a temple-account) to the sixth century. These the editor classifies as: (1) Official, (2) Declarations to Officials, (3) Petitions, (4) Contracts, (5) Taxation, (6) Orders, (7) Accounts, (8) Oracular Questions and Amulets, (9) Private Correspondence. We find here the open door to the real hart life of the people. Here is the human touch that makes them akin to us. Nice questions the oracle as to the expediency of purchasing a slave. A Christian prays the patron Saint Philoxenus to show in some wondrous way whether a friend should be taken to hospital. There is a curiously worded prayer, a blend of magical, Jewish, and Christian elements, "Oror, phor, eloi, adonai, Iao saboath, Michael, Jesus Christ, help us and this house." In the course of his letter to his son, Apollonius says: "If I can buy a cloak for you privately, I will send it at once, if not, I will have it made for you at home. The blankets have been cut out; the account of them, as you write, shall