ces carefully calculated to make him howl.

_Salome_ stands in another category: the author had no lesson to teach.
As a work of art his play would not be invalidated or even weakened if,
instead of the biblical characters and phrases, he had invented his
prophet, slightly altered time and place, and left out the quotations;
but to have done this would have been to avoid shocking people. Of
course it is not always easy to be certain whether an audacity is
employed with the desire to "_ebouriffer le bourgeois_" that may be
excusable, or with the object of beating the big drum and calling
attention, ignobly, to the existence of a work which, but for such means
of publicity, might have remained unnoticed. In the case of _Salome_ it
is hard to guess to which of these two motives one ought to ascribe the
choice of treatment made by the lamentable man of genius who illustrated
the truth of the theory advocated by the late dramatic critic of _The
Times_ in his work "The Insanity of Genius."

Such audacities often deceive the youthful critic, and, in some of the
notices referred to, the signs of youth are manifest in the ill-balanced
enthusiasm, as well as in the employment of phrases of praise which the
old hand shirks with a curious kind of bashfulness.

In criticism there is a difficulty analogous to that which is supposed
to beset the performance of the part of Juliet; it is rather nicely put
in the title of one of Beranger's poems--and also of a rather dreary,
once popular, novel, "Si Jeunesse Savait, si Vieillesse Pouvait." In
youth one has intense sympathy with the lost causes, or, rather, with
those that have not yet been found, and superb contempt for the
conventional, without possessing the judgment to distinguish the tares
from the wheat; every novelty attracts, every audacity appeals, and we
introduce obscure artists of alleged genius by the dozen to an
unsympathetic world; as age and judgment come enthusiasm wanes, till at
last the inevitable crystallization begins and new ideas beat vainly at
the doors of our minds.

Even before the crystallization has become serious it is very hard to
appreciate the rare novelties of idea offered in our theatres; weariness
of stale conventions which affects the young critic in a less degree
than the old, does not easily induce one to accept mere outrages upon
them. _Salome_, indeed, has some outrages upon stale conventions, but
they are rather stale outrages.

Certain French