lent in French drama. Here, for
instance, is a quite typical passage from _Le Duel_, by M. Henri
Lavedan, an author of no small repute; and it would be easy to find even
more magniloquent tirades in the works of almost any of his
contemporaries. I translate from the concluding scene between the Abbe
and the Duchess:

THE ABBE: "In our strange life, there are sometimes unexpected and
decisive moments, sovereign, though we know not why. We feel it,
that is all!--fulgurant moments, which throw, as it were, a flash of
lightning upon our destinies, like those meteors which shine forth
from time to time in the heavens, and of which none can say what
their purple signifies, whether it be a cataclysm or an apotheosis.
Well, it appears to me that we, you and I, are now face to face with
one of these moments!"

THE DUCHESS: "So I, too, believe."

THE ABBE: "We must take care, then, that it be an apotheosis. That
is why I want--Mon Dieu, madame! how shall I say it to you? Where
shall I go to find the chosen words, the words of pure gold, of
diamonds, the immaculate words that are worthy of us? All that you
are, all that you are worth, I know, and I alone know. You have
opened, that I might read it, the book of hours that is your mind. I
am in no wise disquieted about you or your future; yet, that I may
be fully reassured before we part, I wish, I wish you to tell me, to
declare to me, that you are at this very moment in absolute repose,
calm as a lake."

And so Monsieur l'Abbe goes on for another page. If it be said that this
ornate eloquence is merely professional, I reply that his brother, the
atheist doctor, and the Duchess herself, are quite as copious in their
rhetoric, and scarcely less ornate.

It is a mistake to suppose that "literary merit" can be imparted to
drama by such flagrant departures from nature; though some critics have
not yet outgrown that superstition. Let the playwright take to heart an
anecdote told by Professor Matthews in his _Inquiries and Opinions_--an
anecdote of a New England farmer, who, being asked who was the architect
of his house, replied: "Oh, I built that house myself; but there's a man
coming down from Boston next week to put on the architecture." Better no
style at all than style thus plastered on.

* * * * *

What is to be said of the possibilities of blank verse as a dramatic
medium? This is a thorny question, to