es--

HUGH MURRAY: Contentment! Renshaw, do you imagine that there is no
autumn in the life of a profligate? Do you think there is no moment
when the accursed crop begins to rear its millions of heads above
ground; when the rich man would give his wealth to be able to tread
them back into the earth which rejects the foul load? To-day you
have robbed some honest man of a sweet companion!

DUNSTAN RENSHAW: Look here, Mr. Murray--!

HUGH MURRAY: To-morrow, next week, next month, you may be happy--but
what of the time when those wild oats thrust their ears through the
very seams of the floor trodden by the wife whose respect you will
have learned to covet! You may drag her into the crowded
streets--there is the same vile growth springing up from the chinks
of the pavement! In your house or in the open, the scent of the
mildewed grain always in your nostrils, and in your ears no music
but the wind's rustle amongst the fat sheaves! And, worst of all,
your wife's heart a granary bursting with the load of shame your
profligacy has stored there! I warn you--Mr. Lawrence Kenward!

If we compare this passage with any page taken at random from
_Mid-Channel_, we might think that a century of evolution lay between
them, instead of barely twenty years.

The convention of wit-at-any-price is, indeed, moribund; but it is
perhaps not quite superfluous, even now, to emphasize the difference
between what the French call the "mot d'auteur" and the "mot de
situation." The terms practically explain themselves; but a third class
ought to be added--the "mot de caractere." The "mot d'auteur" is the
distinguishing mark of the Congreve-Sheridan convention. It survives in
full vigour--or, shall one say, it sings its swan-song?--in the works of
Oscar Wilde. For instance, the scene of the five men in the third act of
_Lady Windermere's Fan_ is a veritable running-fire of epigrams wholly
unconnected with the situation, and very slightly related, if at all, to
the characters of the speakers. The mark of the "mot d'auteur" is that
it can with perfect ease be detached from its context. I could fill this
page with sayings from the scene in question, all perfectly
comprehensible without any account of the situation. Among them would be
one of those; profound sayings which Wilde now and then threw off in his
lightest moods, like opals among soap-bubbles. "In the world," says
Dumby, "there are two tragedies. One is not