of the age, to circumstances of her own weakly constitution; all of which signifies as much as the destiny of earlier times or the universal law. The realist has done away with guilt as he has done away with God, but the consequences of a deed, the punishment, the hard labour and the fear thereof, cannot be obliterated, because they will remain whether he absolve or not; because people to whom any wrong has been done are not so kindly disposed as those can easily be to whom no harm has happened. Even should the father renounce for earnest reasons the punishing of his daughter, she would punish herself, as she does here in consequence of the inborn or acquired feeling of honour, which the higher classes inherit from where? From barbarism, from the Asiatic native country of their ancestors, from the knighthood of the middle ages? All of which is very fine, but unprofitable to the existence of species. It is the nobleman's Harikari of the Japanese law of conscience which commands him to cut open his body when anyone insults him, and it exists in more modified form in the duel, the privilege of the nobility. Therefore, the servant Jean lives on, but Fröken Julie cannot live without honour. It is the servant's advantage over the master to be free from this dangerous judgment as to honour; and in all of us Aryans there exists something of the nobleman or Don Quixote, which causes us to sympathise with the suicide who has committed a dishonourable act, and so lost his honour; and we are noblemen enough to feel sorrow at a fallen greatness, even when the fallen could rise again, and try to set things right by honourable deeds."

Here my extract from Strindberg must pause. It will show at least that there are still dramatic authors who have a very serious theory of their art and accept very seriously its responsibilities.

JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY

2II

TABLE TALK.

N°

WOMEN OF THE RESTORATION.

mistake greater than that of supposing the Court of Charles II. to be in any sense representative of the general state of England can easily be made. While the Court was degraded by orgies and rites worthy of the Cotyttia, the inmost heart of the nation was cleanly, and even Puritan. The modest virtues of decency and sobriety were not even confined to the dissenting or ex-Commonwealth party. More than one of those who had fought most heroically and made most sacrifices for the First Charles, and had hailed with delight the Restoration of the Stuart dynasty, withdrew in disgust into solitude, and exhibited there the graces and proprieties which had moved the satire of a Sedley or a Wilmot. The idea of compiling a biography of the good women of the Restoration originated with the late Dean of Wells, Edward Hayes Plumptre. It has been carried out by a lady, Grace Johnstone,1 whom his ideas inspired, and for whom, had his life been spared, he would have written a preface. Of the names that at once spring into the memory, that of Rachel, Lady Russell-" that sweet saint that stood by Russell's side"-is the most conspicuous. Mrs. Hutchinson, however, and more than one of the Verneys come scarcely behind. Mary Boyle, subsequently Countess of Warwick, is a less known type of adorable womanhood; while of Margaret Blagge, Mrs. Godolphin (Maid of Honour to the Duchess of York and to Queen Catherine of Braganza), we know little except what is told us by Evelyn; and of Margaret, Lady Maynard, just what is told us in the funeral sermon upon her by Bishop Ken. The record supplied us concerning these priestesses who aided in a dismal time to keep alive the fire of purity is interesting and instructive. I can only regret that the list supplied does not include Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle; in some respects, perhaps, the most interesting and a little madness apart-the greatest woman of her epoch

' Digby, Long, & Co.

"THE SISTERS.” 1

UT for the play within a play which it contains, Mr. Swinburne's

theatre. Unlike his previous pieces, it is dramatic throughout, and not in portions, and its length is commensurate with what Shakespeare in the Prologue to "Romeo and Juliet ” calls "the two hours' traffic of our stage." One or two poetical passages might call for lopping. Little excision would, however, be requisite, and the whole could not fail to stimulate and stir an audience. The scene of lovemaking, in which Mabel compels Reginald to propose to her, is eminently tender and pathetic, and could not fail to wring tears from the public. Supremely touching are, indeed, the

Misadventur'd piteous overthrows

of this "pair of star-crossed lovers." To the enjoyment of the artistic perfection of the whole, to realise the manner in which history not only repeats itself, but forges for itself the conditions of its reputation, it is needful to have the intercalated scene, the notion of which Mr. Swinburne has avowedly taken from "Dodsley's great old plays." Upon the stage the story might possibly be narrated. It could scarcely at least be allowed, as at present, to constitute an act to itself in a work with which it is remotely and accidentally connected. That "The Sisters" has robustness enough for an evening entertainment may not perhaps be maintained. A series of afternoon performances at a West End theatre would, however, attract. only reason I see why these should not be given, lies in the fact that the male characters are all chivalrous, and that no masculine part has such supremacy as would commend it to a manager.

MR. SWINBURNE'S PRAISE OF NORTHUMBERLAND.

N calling a tragedy, and not a tragic comedy or a drama, a piece which depicts the rivalry of two sisters for the love of a youth, and the murder of one sister by the other, Mr. Swinburne departs from the ancient custom which confined the use of the word to the line of Pelops, or at least depicted tragedy with " sceptred pall." As its action is confined to Northumbrian families, the poet, himself a Northumbrian, may regard the departure as not greater than that of Shakespeare in "Romeo and Juliet." Very eloquent is his praise of his own county. There are those who will not admit the

Chatto & Windus.

supremacy of Northumberland over Cumberland or Westmoreland or the Yorkshire dales. Most English counties merit a laureate, and if Mr. Swinburne constitutes himself that of Northumberland, so much the better for the northernmost of the shires. As extensive quotation from a play that deserves analysis such as I cannot afford is prohibited, I give the one passage in which the hero expresses his sentiment towards his county:

I just ask you where you'll find its like?

Take the streams away,

The country would be sweeter than the south
Anywhere give the south our streams, would it
Be fit to match our borders? Flower and crag,
Burnside and boulder, heather and whin—you don't
Dream you can match them south of this? And then,
If all the unwatered country were as flat

As the Eton playing-fields, give it back our burns,
And set them singing through a sad south world,
And try to make them dismal as its fens-
They won't be ! Bright and tawny, full of fun
And storm and sunlight, taking change and chance
With laugh on laugh of triumph-why, you know
How they plunge, pause, chafe, stride across the rocks
And chuckle along the rapids, till they breathe

And rest and pant and build some bright deep bath
For happy boys to dive in, and swim up,

And match the water's laughter.

I

MR. HENLEY'S POEMS.

HAVE made acquaintance late in the day with the poetry of

Mr. Henley, and, like most converts, am an enthusiast. His latest volume, "The Song of the Sword, and other Poems," reveals a genuine poet. Mystical, powerful, grim, and suggestive as it is, the "Song of the Sword" is not finer than some Roumanian folksongs on the same subject. So soon as we reach the "London Voluntaries" and other poems which follow, we encounter work of remarkable originality, beauty, power, and charm. It is the fashion to call Mr. Henley's verses realistic. I do not like the term, and find it, degraded as it is by earlier associations, inadequate and unhappy. Realism of a sort there is. The commonest objects of the streets are depicted, and we have a single line of verse consisting of the two words "Trafalgar Square"-an utterance from which Walt Whitman might have recoiled. The light in which they are seen, however, is neither

1 David Nutt.

common nor realistic. They are steeped in the glow of imagination, passion, poetry. Within the limits I impose on myself it is impossible to give the reader an adequate idea of the character of Mr. Henley's verse. Rugged, stern, and dark, it has in passages that meditative solemnity in which Englishmen have always delighted; passionate, sensuous, and dreamy, it seems in others to issue from a new Keats. Within a few lines of each other are specimens of the two phases. Here is the first:

And Death the while

Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile,
Death in his threadbare working trim-

Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland,
And with expert inevitable hand

Feels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung,
Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart:
Thus signifying unto old and young,

However hard of mouth or wild of whim,

'Tis time-'tis time by his ancient watch-to part

With books, and women, and talk, and drink, and art ;

And you go humbly after him

To a mean suburban lodging: on the way

To what or where

Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say.

It is fair to the author to say that the quotation breaks off in the middle. Following these lines, sombre enough for Gray, though wholly unlike him, come others, four only of which I give :

As if my paramour, my bride of brides,

Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abides

In some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark;
Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade.

The melody and beauty of this are not easily surpassed.

THE POET OF LONDON.

N the light in which he exhibits the most familiar objects in

Who has not felt how

Who not seen

At night this City of Trees

Turns to a tryst of vague and strange

And monstrous majesties?

A rakehell cat-how furtive and a-cold!

A spent witch homing from some infamous dance-
Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade
Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade !