r a horrible dance
Which suggested the prance
Of a half-epileptic baboon.

* * * * *

"The Prime Minister threw aside precedent to such an extent that
he got out of his depth and went on his knees when we were on the
rocks."--_Letter in "The Globe_."

When we get out of our depth we never think of kneeling on the bottom.

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"VICTORY."

MR. MACDONALD HASTINGS has invented, and committed, yet another new
sin--that of attempting to do a CONRAD novel into a three-act play.
Fifteen, possibly; but three? We hardly think. What every Conradist
knows is that you can't compress that master of subtlety without
losing the master's dominant quality--atmosphere; that it's not so
much the things he says but the queer way and the odd order in which
he says them that matter. He is not precisely a filmable person.

And yet, all things considered, the potter has produced a tolerable
pot, and we may write down his fault of extreme foolhardiness as
venial. What, however, Mr. CONRAD himself thought of the rehearsals,
if he attended them--but perhaps we need not go into that.

It is easy to see the attraction, for the players, of the series
of star parts provided by the exciting story. You have first the
eccentric, misjudged Swede, _Heyst_ (the adapter makes him an
Englishman, perhaps wisely, as our stage takes no account of Swedes),
come from self-banishment on a far Pacific island--a complex Conradian
personality. Then his arch-enemy, _Schomberg_, lieutenant of reserve,
shady hotel-keeper, sensualist and craven, with his insane malice.
To these enter as pretty a company of miscreants as ever sailed the
Southern seas: the sinister _Jones_, misogynist to the point of fine
frenzy, nonconformist in the matter of card-playing, and thereafter
frank bandit with a high ethic as to the superiority of plain robbery
under arms over mere vulgar swindling--a gentleman with a code, in
fact; his strictly incomparable "secretary," _Ricardo_ of the rolling
eyes and gait and deathly treacherous knife, philogynist _sans
phrase_; and _Pedro_, their groom, a reincarnated _Caliban_. It may
also be noted that _Heyst_ has a freak servant, the disappearing
_Wang_, whom the adapter uses, I suppose legitimately, as a kind of
clown. And then, finally, there is a charming and unusual heroine,
_Lena_, still in her teens, but of real flesh and blood, innocen