the father's murderer. That doesn't sound strong: but it produced 'Hamlet.' Take Much Ado about Nothing,' for instance, and I do not for the moment see that it has any "motive" at all, as indeed its title indicates. It is not altogether a bad comedy, though. I might add other shibboleths, but will content myself with one more, a truly damnable and preposterous humbug, called "Construction "a boa-constrictor and impostor of a thing which strangles good play after good play in its birth. It is the sum and summary of all the other humbugs, and so easy to appeal to, because anybody can put on the word any "construction" he likes, without being obliged to tell us so much as what he thinks he means by it.

As a matter of fact, no man can succeed as a dramatist at all without understanding it, any more than a man can succeed as an architect without understanding drawing. It is the A B C, the mechanism, the mere necessary of the art, and it means nothing in the world but this: to tell a plain story clearly. If an author does that, and holds his audience, who is to dictate to him in what way he ought to tell it, mechanically? His "construction" is essentially his own, and part of him. Yet I remember me of a young and airy gentleman, who had just made a success with a first play a short time ago, who wrote to one of the papers during some discussion or another, to inform the public, who have been very good friends of mine, that my misfortune was that I "knew nothing about construction." God bless my soul! My first piece was acted fifteen years before, and I knew Molière and Aristophanes by heart before the young gentleman was out of his swaddles. Well, perhaps he is more modest now. It was as it is with us all when we are cutting our teeth-his purpose to reform the drama on his own account, especially in the matter of literature. Well, he writes good serviceable melodramas, very well put together-to return good for evil-but about as innocent of literature as of telegraphy. But now mark. Before it can be produced, a play runs the gauntlet of all this windy stuff, and the general result is, as the Londoners must be finding out, that as a rule the best plays and the best acting are now-a-days to be found out of London. The author, who does not want to waste his time and his patience, is beginning to look to the Provinces or to America altogether. That same middle body which knows everything is not yet formulated there. But whilst I am about it, this should be remembered. The French drama differs from the English altogether, in nature and in essence. The less you change your scene, the better a play suits the French instinct and their favourite theories of unity. The more you change it in reason, subject to obvious necessities, the better it tallies with the English instinct, be it bad or good. Our old plays prove that for us, as the old French plays prove the opposite for them. "The Rivals'

of late years has never failed, comparatively speaking, but once, just recently, when its scenes were transposed and unified to suit this new and absolutely imaginary and artificial rule of construction, in deference to a supposed demand of the public, who proved their view of the matter by stopping away. French rules are one thing, English another; and an English drama by French rule is apt to be a hybrid and a bore. Some time ago, one of the most able and distinguished of living literary Englishmen was sitting by me, an old friend, in the stalls. The play before us was beautifully constructed. The furniture was perfect, and undisturbed by rude change, or the frivolities of human passion which require it occasionally. After an act he said to me: "Plays are not half as well put together as they used to be; they never change the scene." I have often thought what a lesson that should be to the people who "know all about it;" for the speaker-there is no breach of decorum in saying so-was the Lord Chief Justice. His is a literary judgment, to which personally I should not be ill content to appeal. But, poor man, he is only a public, after all, and knows nothing about it. He has got to be told.

Now out of these same foolishnesses (which the public can stop and have done with if it makes up its mind-and though good dramatists are not more remarkable phenomena than good anything else, it won't get better plays till it does), rises that dangerous person, the actor-playwright. The result of all this windfullness, which wants the epithets of a Carlyle to deal with, is that an actor is in too many instances regarded as the ideal dramatist, because he is bound to know all about construction; that is, about side scenes. There is no conceivable reason why an actor should not be an author like anybody else, through gift, wit, scholarship, anything. But because he is an actor? Why does a newspaper editor, if he wants a telling article for his journal or Review, go down to the printer's office and ask a compositor to write it, because he knows all about the length and the leading, and how to set up the type? Nonsense. If we want English plays, encourage English authors. For from these causes springs the illiterate drama; which is rapidly leading to the conclusion among "those who know," that the English language is rather an offence than not. Managers also, with us, are also nearly always actors, and they should not be. A skilled critic or man of letters, nor actor nor dramatist, is the true manager, as in France. Hence a drama, which, with all its moral faults, is literary. In English dresses, when "une femme abandonée" becomes, for instance, an abandoned woman, the literature is apt to evaporate. "J'ai mis M. de Chavigny à la porte avec son petit meuble," says Musset, in his exquisite 'Caprice.' Quoth the British renderer, who

dropped Musset, and dubbed himself "author," as indeed I think he was: "I have put M. de Chavigny at the door with his little piece of furniture." But oh, my poor dear mother tongue! There are dramatists enough, I sincerely believe, if the public could get at them. Meantime, we put up with unvernacular translations even of plays that failed in their own tongue. Better to have failed in French than to have a chance of succeeding in English. And revivals are always safe, more or less, judgment not being required. Indeed I remember how a clerk of mine, years ago, once took to forging my name to cheques; and, growing bold with impunity, overdrew my bank account largely. One day I drew a cheque myself for the first time for many months, and it was promptly dishonoured. The bank-people knew my young gentleman's hand so well, that they properly resented mine. So with the drama. The authorities are so accustomed to their dissecting-puzzles of construction, that if anybody brings them anything depending upon other kinds of attraction, they cry out as with a voice, "Good Heavens! this thing is in English! Take it away!"

I particularly wish to avoid anything in this paper which can look like egoism, because it is my wish to point out evils which I believe to be capable of remedy. But for that very reason I wish to say, once for all, that I do not write as what is called a disappointed dramatist. On the contrary. My life is full of many and varied interests, of which the drama is but one. But though the author of but few plays, I have had my ample measure of success, as well as my share of failure, and it is by that right only that I write these lines. Artistically disappointed? Well, yes, I own it. For I have had aspirations which fade with years. The "Drama of the Day," up and down always, I suspect, and much the same on the whole, teaches one one's aims in time. But financially disappointed? Dear me, no or I don't see why I should go on with it. No line of writing, now-a-days, "pays" so well.

But, is there nothing in the thing but pay? Do not even managers, even tragedians, owe a certain duty to Art and to themselves, beyond making it pay? Ought they not to encourage native authorship (there are great exceptions, for I am not speaking of all, remember), and to feel some ambition to link their names with original characters, and with original plays? And, is not the mania for advertisement, in one form or another, passing bounds? Is Notoriety the only object, instead of what it once was, Fame? The second is so hard to win-the first, so easy. Pears's Soap in Art is surely wrong, and Dame Tragedy looks but ill at ease in the guise of a trade-mark. Men of the Macready and Kemble type did not want dramatists. Poor old Muse !

"Must we see, in quiet sorrow,

Tragedy her dark wings fold,

While her gracious name men borrow
For a figure not of old?

"She, who gave her honours stately,
Through the test of mimic scenes,
Gravely won, and worn sedately,

By the Kembles and the Keans

"She, whose majesty a charm meant
To the bearers of her train,
Mystic Eschylean garment,

Wrought of the Romance of Pain

"Overborne, she whispers lowly
To the ears yet juggle-free,
Why profane me? I am holy,
And my grace is-Modesty!"

* This essay was originally a lecture delivered to the Art-Society, in

Conduit Street, on March 18, 1886.

Sainte Marie.

AN EPISODE.

SOME years ago circumstances led me to the French capital. I had no intention of living there, but, lingering on, I gradually formed ties and made it my home-if indeed that can be called a home which was only an apartment inhabited by a solitary woman; but such as it was, I grew fond of it. The quarter of Paris I lived in was pretty and quiet, without being dull, and had a local character peculiar to itself. It was much inhabited by rich tradespeople who lived in pretty villas. Everywhere there were gardens, and when I opened my window in the summer evenings, the air I breathed was balmy with the scent of flowers and the blossoms of trees and shrubs. There were even fields and fruit trees to walk among, and dewy grass; and, in the hush of the lovely evenings, one might hear the soft, rich voice of the nightingale mingle with the strange, silvery note of the equally invisible bell-frog.

The church, replaced now, in deference to the larger requirements of the parish, by a huge Romanesque edifice, was in my time a small antique structure standing on a slightly raised mound in a kind of small "Place," in the centre of which stood a monument to the honour of "Christ our Saviour and His servant the worthy The church was crooked, being sunk at the foundations, and had an odd, lop-sided look, the effect of having but one aisle; the other, legend said, having been swept away by the onslaught of an English army many hundred years since. Within, the little church was a still, calm place, except for the rustle and bustle of over-zealous, devout ladies, whom I generally managed to avoid. There was, however, one lady with whom, without any choice of mine, I there became inevitably acquainted, whilst executing in common with her a certain small parochial charge laid upon us by the good Curé. She was a fidgety little, elderly Italian widow, with straggling locks, and many old-fashioned furbelows and flounces and compliments. As to intelligence she seemed, so far as regarded this world, to have few ideas beyond the Italian cuisine, whose receipts she was always giving me; but her other-world horizon had, I soon discovered, the wide range which so frequently goes with simple faith. People are, I have often found, interesting in the degree in which