-called romantic comedy, without drawing nice distinctions.
This indiscriminate denunciation has naturally caused annoyance and
reprisals. Because some critics disliked _A Chinese Honeymoon_
enormously, because wild motor 'buses could not drag them to see _The
Scarlet Pimpernel_, they do not doubt, or pretend to doubt, that
hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people have enjoyed these
pieces. Without for one moment believing in the phrase "De gustibus non
est disputandum" as ordinarily interpreted, one must fully recognise
that palates differ. If M. Steinheil chose to dine upon cold pork-pie,
sausage, cold veal and lobster as the papers allege, it is not
surprising that he died, only a little amazing that the French police
were puzzled as to the cause of his death, but there was no reason for
charging him with affectation in eating such a meal or insufficient
culture, though it was hardly the banquet of a gourmet. One may pull a
wry face at a costly _Bouillabaisse chez_ Roubillon at Marseilles
without doubting that poor old "G.A.S.," and Thackeray too, loved the
dish. Some prefer homely beer to any of the white wines of the Rhine,
yet many people honestly enjoy those high-priced varieties of
weak-minded vinegar; and no doubt it is not affectation which causes
some people to allege that they like black pudding and tripe and onions.

The matter has its serious aspect. The attacks made, very unfairly, upon
the novel forms of drama by conservative critics, when they take this
form of alleging that not only the critic but the audience was bored,
and that professed admirers are insincere, undoubtedly are very
effective, and certainly are sometimes made in good faith.

There are people so foolish as to think that nobody can like what they
do not; also so fatuous as to consider that no one ought to like what
they do not; but to jump from this to alleging that the professed
admirers of ambitious works are humbugs is outrageous. The butcher boy
enjoys _Sweeney Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street_: why should he
disbelieve my statement that others get pleasure from a performance of a
_Hedda Gabler_, which would hardly appeal to him?

Large numbers of playgoers have been kept away from able and ambitious
dramas, written by dramatists with a true artistic aim, because of the
oft-repeated allegations by newspaper writers, who did not like them,
that everybody was bored; also the wholesale denunciation of the lighter
forms of d