"Karin,” “A Visit," and "The Plowdens" were, in different ways, good plays, remarkable plays, strong plays. They were none of them dramatic revelations; they did not proclaim, as the first performance of "A Doll's House" proclaimed, the coming of a new order of things, the beginning of a revolution on the stage. But at least they carried on worthily the tradition of the previous year, of the year that had been called the Ibsen year, from the number of his plays that it saw produced for the first time on the English stage. They served to show that, in races akin to our own, races of kindred blood, races almost of common speech, the drama was a living active thing, dealing with real men and women, with their passions and their pains, with the inexorabilities of existence, ignoring alike conventionality and affectation, aiming solely at an honest realism. Neither "Karin" nor "The Plowdens" nor A Visit" belong to the highest development of the Northern drama. No one of them is to be compared for a moment with a play by Ibsen, or with a play by Strindberg. But, although in the circle of the Scandinavian drama they might hold relatively a low place, they were so far ahead of anything we could produce ourselves this year that their merits loomed disproportionately large, like shadows on a mountain mist.

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Let it be recognised frankly, once for all, that there is nothing whatever unpatriotic in an enthusiastic recognition of the Scandinavian drama. Even if it were possible to regard art as a thing limited by geographical degrees, and bounded by the clauses of treaties, we should be forced to remember that for long enough we have had, in the true sense of the word, no independent drama in England. France has been our inspiration, France has been our idol; if we must be unoriginal, it is no greater crime to draw our inspiration from the far North than from "our sweet enemy, France." But, of course, if our drama is doomed to depend upon any inspiration from abroad, whether from France or from Scandinavia, its case is well-nigh hopeless. What we hope those of us who most warmly admire the Scandinavian drama-is, that the example of men who are of kin with Englishmen in blood and tongue will make them eager, not to slavishly imitate the pieces of Stockholm and Christiania and Copenhagen, but to take heart of grace from the truth, the naturalism of these plays, and to endeavour, in consequence, to find in purely English conditions suggestions for plays as powerful, as moving, and as true as anything that the masters of the North have created.

A certain body of opinion persists in connecting admiration for the Scandinavian drama with adhesion to the principles of what is

known as the New Criticism. The connection is more apparent than real. To begin with the term, New Criticism is very vague and very misleading. In its narrowest sense it refers to a certain number of young men, not six all told, who have in common the privilege of very decided opinions, and who are supposed to have in common an uncompromising adoration for the same gods. In its wider sense the New Criticism would seem to mean, in the mouths of its antagonists, anybody who dislikes anything that is old-fashioned, anything that is not of the moment momentary. If this definition were in any sense applicable to the New Criticism, then the New Criticism would not call for five seconds of serious consideration. If it does call for serious consideration at all, if it can in any real sense be said to exist, it is because it does, in the person of each of its individual members, strive very earnestly and very anxiously after artistic truth and artistic beauty. That a New Criticism exists which has any common principles, any common plan of campaign, any common principles of judgment, it would be, I imagine, rash to maintain. The little handful of men who are commonly supposed to serve under that banner are, indeed, chiefly remarkable for the incompatibility of their views, for their almost uncompromising differences of opinion, for their deeply sundered theories of artistic salvation.

In the immediate past the whole question of the New Criticism has been brought into prominence by an article of Mr. William Archer's in the August number of the Fortnightly Review. Mr. William Archer is an authority entitled to be listened to with all attention when he writes about the drama. To him belongs the credit of having, at a time when the drama and, in consequence, dramatic criticism were at a pitiably low ebb in this country, done much to quicken the interest and spur the intelligence of the public. To him more than to anyone else is due the spread of what is called "Ibsenism." He has laboured hard and loyally to prove that the stage is a serious subject, to be treated in all seriousness by men honestly anxious for its honour and glory. He has been brilliantly seconded in this effort by Mr. A. B. Walkley, another of the critics of the New Criticism, but a man who, as thinker and as writer, differs widely from Mr. Archer, whose attitude towards the dramatic art is widely different, whose views of life, as expressed in his writings, are widely different, and the views of life of a critic inevitably influence his criticism. Mr. Archer and Mr. Walkley are always classed together. The classification is absurdly unscientific, but it at least shows that they stand, as it were, apart. "Where three men stand

together the kingdom is less by three," and in the sense of hostility to the old dramatic order, Mr. Archer and Mr. Walkley, and some one or two others, may be said to stand together.

Mr. William Archer reminds me a little of Faust when, on a certain unfortunate occasion, he interpreted the sign of the Earth Spirit and aroused its servant. When once he had aroused the Earth Spirit, Faust did not very well know what to do with it, very much as the Master's apprentice in the legend did not know what to do with the familiar demon that he had evoked while his master slumbered. Mr. Archer has called up, not indeed the Earth Spirit, but the Spirit of the New Criticism, and, having called it up, there would appear to be moments when he is not quite at his ease in its shadowy presence, and is slightly uncertain of the means to employ wherewith to exorcise it. For the New Criticism-which it is to his honour and his glory to have summoned from the darkness which surrounded him-threatens to be as unmanageable as the trickiest of familiars or the most terrible of Djinns. Already the New Criticism, like every other new creed-the greatest of all creeds not excepted-has shown a tendency to break off into all manner of heresies, to evolve all manner of new theories. I will not say, surveying the little army of the new critics, in the words of the Ulysses of "Troilus and Cressida": "Look how many Grecian tents do stand hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions;" but I will say that the differences of opinion in the New Criticism are very many, and that they are sometimes very grave indeed.

What the New Criticism has in common is its receptivity, its readiness to welcome new forms of art, its antagonism to conventions merely as conventions and to formulas merely as formulas. If it has been driven to seek abroad for the examples of success in the art with which it is immediately concerned, it is because no such examples are to be found on the contemporary English stage, strangled as it is with conventionalities, mummied as it is with mannerisms. Mr. Pinero made a grave mistake when, in the letter which Mr. Archer quotes in the August Fortnightly, he wrote bewailing the action of the New Criticism. "A few years ago the native authors were working with a distinct and sound aim, and with every prospect of popularising a rational observant home-grown play." When, one asks in wonder, was this revolution taking place? "Then," says Mr. Pinero, "came the Scandinavian drama, held up by the New Critics as the perfect drama, and used by them as a means of discrediting native produce. Just for the present everything is knocked askew." The facts are quite the contrary. There was no re

volutionary movement at all until the New Criticism came, and the example of the Scandinavian drama has stimulated thought and action to a degree which the party of progress could scarcely have hoped for at first. Mr. Pinero himself has felt the benefit of the influence, and the best play Mr. Jones has done, "The Crusaders," was the outcome of that influence. The New Criticism, the criticism of progress, had a hard task before it, but it has worked hard and succeeded beyond its dreams. It has done much. It has much more to do.

JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY.

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TABLE TALK.

AN IMMEDIATE RESPONSE TO APPEAL.

ARELY, indeed, has response to what I may call prayer come so immediately and so gratifyingly as in the case of my paragraph in last month's Gentleman's Magazine, entitled "A New National Library." At the very moment when that paragraph appealing for a library for the scholar, "confined to the works of great cost and importance," for which he has need, was put into the hands of the public, the very ideal library for which I asked was being given to the country by Mrs. Rylands. Perfectly accidental was the coincidence, and I had not the slightest glimmer of the fact that such a gift was contemplated. When I heard of the prospective sale of the Althorp Library, with which I dealt in a companion paragraph, the idea of a purchase by the nation of that noble collection entered my mind, only to be dismissed as visionary and unpractical. At the same moment, fortunately, the same idea entered into the mind of another who was able to regard the purchase as practical, who bought the library en bloc, is about to place it in a convenient home and give it to England. Of all libraries in the world-such, that is, as can conceivably come into the market-this is the ideal to form the nucleus, and, indeed, to constitute the library of which I speak. When once the books are lodged in their new home it is certain that lacunæ will be filled up, and that other bequests will follow. That the library will be located in Manchester instead of London, I must regret for other than purely selfish reasons. The motive is, however, so respectable and so pious that I could not dream of protest. Happy is the land that has citizens capable of endowing it with such

a treasure.

OUR LATEST ACQUISITION.

F my remarks as to the sale of the library I have nothing to

OF my remarks as to the rating of themselves from the incl

lectual life of the nation on the part of the great families is part of that democratising of our lives and institutions the signs of which