. O. WILDE.) Now when the
author of _A Woman of No Importance_ and of _Lady Windermere's Fan_
has to find his own materials for a plot (_"'Play-wrights' materials
for plots made up.' Idea for Literary and Dramatic Advertisement"
Note-book, O. W._)--well, he does find them, and makes them his own.
(_"Adoption not adaptation. A clear distinction.--N.B. I confer the
'distinction'" O. W._) Certainly "Our OSCAR" possesses the happy knack
of turning out some well-polished epigrams up to Drawing-room date.
And so it happens that, during the first two Acts, when Mr. WILDE'S
_dramatis personae_ are all gathered together, with nothing to do
and plenty to say, their conversation is light and airy, with an
occasional sparkler coming out (_"A summer night, with, at intervals,
a brilliant meteor flashing through the sky." Uncom. P. B., O. W._),
that crackles, goes pop like the weasel of the old song, and "then is
heard no more," as was the case with _Macbeth's_ poor player, and,
as he was a poor player, his fate was not undeserved.--(_Mem. "A Lady
Nickleby or Duchesse de Malapropos, to misquote.--For example, she
might say, as quoting Shakspeare, 'Life's but a walking candle.'"
O. W._)

We all remember how poor _Mr. Dick_ couldn't keep King Charles's Head
out of his manuscript. The Author of _No Importance_ is similarly
affected. Left to himself for a plot, he cannot keep melodrama out of
his play, and what ought to have been a comedy pure and simple (or
the reverse) drops suddenly into old-fashioned theatrical melodrama.
During the first two Acts _Lady Hunstanton_, _Lady Caroline
Pontefract_, _Mrs. Allonby_, _Lord Illingworth_, _The Venerable James
Daubeny, D.D._, talk on pleasantly enough until interrupted by the
sudden apparition of the aforesaid King Charles the First's Head,
represented by the wearisome tirades, tawdry, cheap, and conventional,
belonging to the Lytton-Bulwerian-Money period of the Drama, of which
a considerable proportion falls to the share of the blameless Miss
JULIA NEILSON, who, as _la belle Americaine_, HESTER WORSLEY, in her
attitude towards her audience, resembles the blessed _Glendoveer_,
inasmuch as it is "_hers_ to talk, and _ours_ to hear." Deeply, too,
does everyone sympathise with lively Mrs. BERNARD BEERE, who, as _Mrs.
Arbuthnot_, a sort of up-to-date _Mrs. Haller_, is condemned to do
penance in a kind of magpie costume of black velvet, relieved by a
dash of white, rather calling to mind the lady