While the Baconians are doing their best to claim Shakespeare's works for Bacon, a German writer, Eugene Reichel, has produced a critical inquiry as to "Who wrote the Novum Organon?" He concludes, from the internal evidence of style, that it could not have been Francis Bacon, being at once too poetical and too philosophical, although he acknowledges that here and there it has some of his finger-marks, evidently impressed with cunning after-thought to give color to the pretensions of Bacon. Who then did write the book? Shakespeare was Reichel's first guess, but he threw this aside because he deemed that the dramatist was born a little too late and must have impregnated whatever he penned with more poetry. His final conclusion is that it was a teacher of Bacon's, who, taken suddenly sick, on his death-bed intrusted his philosophical material to his promising pupil.
Horsford's Acid Phosphate Gives Satisfactory Results.—Dr. O. W. Weeks, Marion, Ohio, says, "Its use is followed by results satisfactory both to patient and physician."
A curious libel suit has recently attracted public attention in Germany. The great firm of Brockhaus, in its collection of Spanish novels (published in the original and sold largely in the Spanish-speaking countries of South America), included the novels of Trueba, without any compensation to the author. In an open letter, published in the Deutsche Schriftsteller-Zeitwig, with comments by the editor, W. Lange, the author savagely protested against this treatment, and called the publishers thieves. Brockhaus brought suit against the editor for libel. But the court agreed with Lange and Trueba that the appropriation of unprotected literary property was immoral and reprehensible, and accordingly acquitted Lange. An appeal to a higher court was decided in the same way. An amusing incident in the trial was the reading by defendant's counsel of Brockhaus's own description of literary piracy in the "Conversations-Lexicon" of 1824,—viz., "that literary piracy which, defiantly mocking at right and custom, seeks its aim in reaping what others have sown. The business of a reprinter is base, he is publicly despised, his trade is immoral," etc.
Horsford's Acid Phosphate for Impaired Vitality.—Dr. F. Skillem, Pulaski, Tennessee, says, "I think it is a reliable medicine for impaired vitality."
"Country Luck," by John Habberton, which J. B. Lippincott Company have now ready for publication, is a charming idyl of country life and a satire upon the conventionalities and affectation of social life in New York, worked together with consummate tact and skill into a delightful love-story.
The Horsford Almanac and Cook-Book mailed free on application to the Rumford Chemical Works, Providence, Rhode Island.
Among the many Southern writers who will grace early numbers of Lippincott's Magazine, special mention may be made of Miss Amélie Rives, who will contribute a novel, short stories, and poems, Thomas Nelson Page, Miss Julia Magruder, Miss M. G. McClelland, Samuel Minturn Peck, Wm. H. Hayne, and others.
