--a monkey trick he ought to have outlived, a childish
storm of tears which he ought to be able to control. In the story in
question Captain Brassbound has nourished through his whole erratic
existence, racketting about all the unsavoury parts of Africa--a mission
of private punishment which appears to him as a mission of holy justice.
His mother has died in consequence of a judge's decision, and Brassbound
roams and schemes until the judge falls into his hands. Then a pleasant
society lady, Lady Cicely Waynefleet tells him in an easy conversational
undertone--a rivulet of speech which ripples while she is mending his
coat--that he is making a fool of himself, that his wrong is irrelevant,
that his vengeance is objectless, that he would be much better if he
flung his morbid fancy away for ever; in short, she tells him he is
ruining himself for the sake of ruining a total stranger. Here again we
have the note of the economist, the hatred of mere loss. Shaw (one might
almost say) dislikes murder, not so much because it wastes the life of
the corpse as because it wastes the time of the murderer. If he were
endeavouring to persuade one of his moon-lighting fellow-countrymen not
to shoot his landlord, I can imagine him explaining with benevolent
emphasis that it was not so much a question of losing a life as of
throwing away a bullet. But indeed the Irish comparison alone suggests a
doubt which wriggles in the recesses of my mind about the complete
reliability of the philosophy of Lady Cicely Waynefleet, the complete
finality of the moral of _Captain Brassbound's Conversion_. Of course,
it was very natural in an aristocrat like Lady Cicely Waynefleet to wish
to let sleeping dogs lie, especially those whom Mr. Blatchford calls
under-dogs. Of course it was natural for her to wish everything to be
smooth and sweet-tempered. But I have the obstinate question in the
corner of my brain, whether if a few Captain Brassbounds did revenge
themselves on judges, the quality of our judges might not materially
improve.

When this doubt is once off one's conscience one can lose oneself in the
bottomless beatitude of Lady Cicely Waynefleet, one of the most living
and laughing things that her maker has made. I do not know any stronger
way of stating the beauty of the character than by saying that it was
written specially for Ellen Terry, and that it is, with Beatrice, one of
the very few characters in which the dramatist can claim some part o