lue. This so worries Morris that he goes up to his room with a chance
of going mad.

The others beseech the conjurer to explain the trick; he does so, and
says it is done by magic, which is the whole point of the play, that we
are left to wonder whether it was by magic or by a natural phenomenon.

The conjurer gets the better of the parson, the Rev. Cyril Smith, who
believes in a model public house and the Old Testament, and takes a good
stipend for pretending to believe in the supernatural.

The result of the whole matter is magic, by which we presume the trick
may have been done.

* * * * *

The play is in some ways a difficult one: we are left wondering whether
or not Chesterton believes in magic; if he does, then the conjurer need
not have been so upset that he had gained so much power of a psychic
nature; if he does not, then the conjurer was a clever fraud or a
brilliant hypnotist.

One thing is quite certain, Chesterton brings out the weaknesses of the
dialectic of the parson and doctor in a remarkable way; he makes us
realise that there are some things we really know nothing about; if
lamps turn blue suddenly it may quite well be a 'Something' that may be
magic and might be God or Satan; anyhow, it cannot be explained by an
American young man; it is of the things that the clergy profess to
believe in and very often do not.

It is, I think, undoubtedly a problem play, and I doubt very much if
Chesterton knows what was the agency that did the trick, but I rather
think that 'Magic' is a great play, not because of the situations, but
rather because the more the play is studied the more difficult is it to
say exactly what is the lesson of it.

Magic is called a phantastic comedy; it might well be called a
phantastic tragedy.

_Chapter Eight_

THE NOVELIST

There is perhaps no word in the English language which is more elastic
than the word novel as applied to what is commonly known as fiction. The
word novel is used to describe stories that are as far apart as the
Poles. Thus it is used to describe a classic by Thackeray or Dickens, or
a clever love tale by Miss Dell, or a brilliantly outspoken sex tale by
Miss Elinor Glyn, or a romance by Miss Corelli, or a tale of adventure
by Joseph Conrad, or a very modern type of analytical novel by very
modern writers who are a little bit young and a big bit old.

I do not think that it is an exaggeration to say that