utes of art?
Now see that perfect comedian, Arthur Roberts, superior to Irving because
he is working with living material; how trim and saucy he is! and how he
evokes the soul, the brandy-and-soda soul, of the young men, delightful and
elegant in black and white, who are so vociferously cheering him, "Will you
stand me a cab-fare, ducky, I am feeling so awfully queer?" The soul, the
spirit, the entity of Piccadilly Circus is in the words, and the scene the
comedian's eyes--each look is full of suggestion; it is irritating, it is
magnetic, it is symbolic, it is art.

Not art, but a sign, a presentiment of an art, that may grow from the
present seeds, that may rise into some stately and unpremeditated
efflorescence, as the rhapsodist rose to Sophocles, as the miracle play
rose through Peele and Nash to Marlowe, hence to the wondrous summer of
Shakespeare, to die later on in the mist and yellow and brown of the autumn
of Crowes and Davenants. I have seen music-hall sketches, comic interludes
that in their unexpectedness and naive naturalness remind me of the comic
passages in Marlowe's _Faustus_, I waited (I admit in vain) for some
beautiful phantom to appear, and to hear an enthusiastic worshipper cry out
in his agony:--

"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!
Come, Helen, come; give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena."

And then the astonishing change of key:--

"I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy shall Wurtemberg be sacked," etc.

The hall is at least a protest against the wearisome stories concerning
wills, misers in old castles, lost heirs, and the woeful solutions of such
things--she who has been kept in the castle cellar for twenty years
restored to the delights of hair-pins and a mauve dress, the _ingenue_
to the protecting arm, etc. The music-hall is a protest against Mrs.
Kendal's marital tendernesses and the abortive platitudes of Messrs. Pettit
and Sims; the music-hall is a protest against Sardou and the immense
drawing-room sets, rich hangings, velvet sofas, etc., so different from the
movement of the English comedy with its constant change of scene. The
music-hall is a protest against the villa, the circulating library, the
club, and for this