The special cadence of Sheridan's prose was not a personal quality; it was to a great extent the fashion of the day, which in later times, coarsened by florid elaborations, found its last expression in old-fashioned journalese. In truth, Sheridan himself, with all his wit, had coarsened the cadences of Congreve. In none of Sheridan's plays, except, perhaps, in parts of The Critic, are there any speeches so characteristic and yet so finely chiselled as those which Congreve put into the mouth of his Lady Wishfort, nor had the Irishman's more "literary" speeches the same ease and plasticity of cadence. The scene in The Way of the World, in which Mirabell and Mrs. Millamant discuss conditions of marriage, is a fine example of Congreve's style. To prove my point I should have to quote the whole scene but perhaps one of Millamant's speeches will suffice:

Trifles: At liberty to pay and receive visits to and from whom I please; to write and receive letters, without interrogatories or wry faces on your part; to wear what I please; and choose conversation with regard only to my own taste; to have no obligation upon me to converse with wits that I don't like, because they are your acquaintance; or to be intimate with fools, because they may be your relations. Come to dinner when I please; dine in my dressing-room when I'm out of humor, without giving a reason. To have my closet inviolate; to be sole empress of my tea-table, which you must never presume to approach without first asking leave. And lastly, wherever I am you shall always knock at the door before you come in. These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife.

ness.

Above all, the speech is splendidly calculated for the additional effect of the tones of voice of the actress. The literary quality never smothers the human expression of the writing. Unfortunately the literary man is apt to cling to these old models of dramatic writing and to forget that the cadences of Congreve and Sheridan are no longer of to-day. To introduce the same kind of writing into a play of modern life would be absurd. Moreover our modes of speech are more divergent from our literary manner than appears to have been the case in the days of Sheridan, if we may judge by the epistolatory style of our forefathers and their reports of conversation. Except in tedious after-dinner speeches you seldom hear well-defined cadences in the speech of men of to-day. You seldom hear them even at the House of Commons. The truth is, the music of modern speech is not so formal as it was. At its worst it has a staccato slovenliness; at its best a curious and nervous plasticity. The sense, imagery, and emotion of the subject-matter condition its form. In the eighteenth century, and, by echo, far in the Victorian age the subject-matter of speech was forced into a stereotyped literary mould. That was natural to a more artificial and, perhaps, a more elegant age than ours. Curiously enough, our drama has been long in freeing itself from a literary convention which has become artificial. In the plays of the older school of modern British dramatists you will still have the stilted cadence. It sounds in the speech from John Glayde's Honor which I have quoted, and Mr. A. W. Pinero is a past-master of the cadence. Indeed, some critics even account this to him as a literary virtue, whereas it is precisely the quality that makes his plays non-literary from a modern point of view.

The younger school of dramatists is more literary without making pretence

to that quality. Mr. Bernard Shaw, at his best and when he forgets that he has been a journalist and a tubthumper, has written some genuine literary drama in the modern sense. Mr. Granville Barker, in The Voysey Inheritance, has also displayed a sense of literature in drama, and so have Mr. John Galsworthy and the newest dramatist Mr. Anthony Wharton. Both Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. Wharton are free from the modern vice of peppering the speeches of their dramatis persona with epigrams.

IV.

It is not true, therefore, that our drama is lacking in literary qualities, and when a writer makes that assertion without modification he may be taken as ignorant of what literature in relation to drama really means. In the first place, it is a general mistake to presume that, outside blank-verse plays, there can be "absolute" literary beauty in drama. The instance I gave at the beginning of this article of Wagner's adaptation of the symphony to opera will not serve, for the musician has his orchestra as a second means of expression, as an invisible chorus, as it were. The dramatist is bound by his dramatis persona, and the stale device of a raisonneur which we find cropping up in many modern plays has become too tiresome to be tolerated as a mouthpiece for the author's opinions on life expressed in literary terms. It is one of the defects, indeed, of Mr. Bernard Shaw's dramatic style. At the same time the literary man who assumes that writing for the stage is a matter of mere conversational naturalness misunderstands the conventions of dramatic art. It is necessary for the artist to preserve that naturalness in a modern play, but at the same time he has to write his dialogue with a concentration and a suggestiveness which are not to be found in ordinary speech.

That is the great difficulty of playwriting. By dint of indefatigable filing down and subtle chiselling Ibsen became a master of the art, but he carried it to such lengths that his dialogue is often obscure in its wealth of suggestiveness, and his plays in their excellent English translation at least, are apt to be stiff and frigid from excess of dramatic virtue.

If there is one thing our drama needs to lift it to the level of French and German drama it is that literary men who have looked on the novel as their medium of expression should turn to the stage, and happily there are signs that their attention is being turned to it. But the novelist in writing for the stage must learn many things. He must learn that the psychological basis of a play should be sounder than is necessary in a novel. He cannot explain his characters on the stage; they must explain themselves without the assistance of an analytical advocate. A psychological hiatus may be bridged over in a novel by a page of brilliant analysis; but in a play that hiatus may wreck the whole concern and make good work on the part of the players almost impossible. He must also learn that a few moments of action take the place of pages of description, and, above all, he must forget all the old-fashioned plays he has ever seen, and not be misled into believing that crude melodrama is necessary to the stage. We have grown out of that long ago, and we do not now quarrel with a play because it is not sensational. We only demand from it that the subject should be treated in terms of drama; that the characters themselves should make the clash which is necessary on the stage. Finally, the literary man must learn that words are not his only medium of expression; that he has at his command the far more subtle means of facial expression, tones of voice, and gesture, and

that these instruments must not only be allowed to play their parts in the whole orchestra of dramatic performances but, to a great extent, must condition the dialogue, making extended The Fortnightly Review.

speech in many cases quite unnecessary. The result will not be absolute literature, but it will be modern dramatic literature.

E. A. Baughan.

CHAPTER VIII.

On the following morning Stephen Hardy was slowly jogging down the lane which led from his premises to the high road, on his way to the meet, when he was hailed by name.

"Good morning, Mr. Hardy," said a girl's voice.

Stephen reined up his horse and looked round. On his right was the paling which skirted his own fields; on the left the high wall which shut in the garden of the Little Farm; no one was apparently in sight, yet the voice most certainly belonged to one of the Miss Leslies.

"You're going to hunt, I suppose," it pursued. "Why don't you wear pink, Mr. Hardy?"

A certain elfishness in the tone and in the trill of laughter which accompanied the query identified the speaker with the younger of the sisters. Stephen turned in his saddle and looked behind him. Old Cox was leaning on his hoe on the path in front of the Little Farm, apparently lost in meditation; but no other human figure was in sight. "You've looked in front, and you've looked behind, and you've looked all round-why don't you look up?" inquired Bess.

Stephen did as he was bid. There was a high mound on the further side of the wall, as he knew, which had at one time been crowned by a sort of shrubbery; a large clump of pampasgrass still remained surmounting the little eminence, and in the midst of this

stood Bess, possibly a good deal to the detriment of the plant in question. Her small figure was almost lost amid the thick growth of stalk and withered leaf, and her uncovered head peered out from the midst of the waving plumes, with fantastic effect. Catching Stephen's eye she immediately turned this head to its most engaging angle, and waved the tall stems to which she was clinging, so that white feathery flakes detached themselves and filled the air about her.

"What are you doing up there?" asked Stephen, with a smile that was half-astonished, half-admiring.

"I'm pretending to be a fairy," responded Bess, shaking the pampasstalk again. "I've been pretending for a long time, and it's quite nice."

After all she was only a child. Stephen smiled up at her quite paternally. She did, indeed, look rather like a fairy-a pantomime fairy-as she stood poised thus on her insecure pedestal, with the wintry sunshine playing on her brightly-tinted head and face, and turning the surrounding plumes into silver and gold.

"When I am up here, do you see," she resumed, "I feel I'm in a beautiful world. I can forget everything that is sordid and squalid. I think of all the kind and generous things I could do for my friends if I had the power as well as the will."

Here the blue pinafore fluttered with a little sigh.

"And I think-I think, too, of what

"I suppose so," said Stephen, considering her gravely.

His horse, which remembered it was a hunting morning if he did noť, gave an impatient little spring and recalled his mind to the business in hand.

"Well, I must get on, I suppose," he remarked. "I'm rather late already, and the meet is a good way off."

"Lucky you," said Bess. "What a glorious thing it must be to have a good gallop on such a day as this! Kitty and I used to ride once-but that belongs to the past, like every other nice thing."

Stephen raised his hat rather awkwardly and jogged on down the lane.

He was riding slowly homewards through the gathering dusk, after a capital day's sport, when, on passing a turnip-field belonging to a neighboring farmer, of which a small portion was being hurdled off for sheep, he was startled by the sound of a woman's voice crying out in terror or in anger. Raising himself in his stirrups he looked over the hedge, and saw a little group of figures gathered together in a corner of this field; in the midst was a woman struggling with a tall man, whose loud guffaw of laughter was echoed by his companions. The group was standing by an open gate near which was a cart, half full of hurdles.

"Now then, now then, what's all this?" shouted Stephen, as, putting his horse to a trot, he hastened towards the spot.

The party in the field were too much occupied with the jest in hand to pay any attention to him, but in another moment he was in the midst of them, and, springing from his horse, pushed

his way towards the still struggling

woman.

"Now then," he cried again, seizing her molester by the shoulder, "what's this?"

It was too dark for him to distinguish the woman's face, but there was something familiar to him in the outlines of her figure She freed herself now from the relaxed grasp of her startled tormentor, and, turning away, dashed her hand across her eyes.

"He-he insulted I," she said, with a sob.

"What! Sheba!" exclaimed Stephen; then tightening his grip on the prisoner, he shook him until he cried out for mercy.

The other men crowded round. "Nay, Sir, 'twas but a bit of a jest. Sheba Baverstock be so stand-off-like, she do fair tempt the bwoys to carry on wi' nonsense!"

"I'll not let nobody touch me," said the woman, or rather the girl, for the voice, broken though it was, sounded clear and young.

""Twas but a bit o' horseplay," urged one of the defenders, "no harm meant. The bwoy was but for snatchin' a kiss."

"E-es," she cried, flashing round upon him, "jist because I've got nobody to stand up for me you think you can take liberties-a lot o' cowards that ye be!"

Stephen's left hand still grasped the bridle of his horse, and he now turned to the last speaker.

"Lead my horse on to the road," he said, "and hold him for me. I'll take this business in hand. I'll show you, you folks here, that it isn't safe to insult a woman, however lonely she may be."

The girl, without a word, caught hold of the rein and led away the horse. When she had passed through the gate Hardy turned to her aggressor.

"Now then," he said, "you may either

Having released his victim at length and upbraided the group generally in a few scathing words, Stephen rejoined the girl, who was walking up and down the road with her head bent and her bosom still heaving with sobs.

"Sheba," he said, coming alongside and taking possession of the bridle, "Sheba, why will you lay yourself open to such treatment? How often must I ask you that?"

"You do know as well as I do," returned she; "I've got to work to keep myself, and father too."

"Then why not do proper woman's work? I told you we could find you plenty to do any day in the dairy at our place. You could go home as often as you liked to see to your father."

"Nay, I'll never do that," she returned vehemently, "never! You and me was equals once-I'll not be your servant now, nor your mother's neither."

a

"What were you doing in the field yonder?" asked Stephen after troubled pause.

"Oh, I did bring up a load of hurdles there; they be fetchin' back my cart now, looksee."

One of the men was indeed approaching with a horse and cart. He delivered the reins to Sheba, with an obsequious air, and stood back, staring at her and the farmer.

"That'll do," said the latter sharply. As the man turned away, Sheba climbed into the cart and gathered up

the reins, but Stephen barred her progress for yet another moment.

"I wish you'd let me help you," he said earnestly. "For the sake of old times you might do it, though you are so proud."

""Tis along o' wold times that I won't," she returned. "Nay, Stephen, I can get along right enough if folks 'ull leave me alone, an' I reckon they'll do that now you've given that chap a lesson."

"This old horse of yours," persisted Stephen, as though he had not heard her, "he'll scarce keep on his legs much longer. Now if you'll accept the one I offered ye-a good beast with many a day's work left in him yet, though his wind's damaged-you might start a proper tranting business. I'd be glad, too, to find a home for poor Duke. He's no good to me, and I don't like to destroy him; so the kindness would be as much on your side as mine."

"No, Stephen," she returned, "I won't take nothin' from ye-nothin'. Not your horse, nor yet your money. I took help of another kind from ye today, and thank ye for it, but your charity I don't want, and I won't have!"

Stephen stepped back, and, answering to a jerk of the reins, Sheba's horse, which seemed indeed to be very old and feeble, shambled slowly away. When the cart disappeared from sight Stephen mounted his own horse and rode homewards. He sighed to himself as he proceeded on his way, and his thoughts for some few moments busied themselves with the recent encounter. Presently, however, they wandered away to another point, and he recalled once more certain words which had been dropped down to him over the high wall that morning.

"We lead rather miserable lives. . . Lucky you. .. Kitty and I used to ride once-but that belongs to the past, like every other nice thing."