cellence of the cast. Miss Grace
Croft was surely the true Patricia. Of the Duke of Mr. Fred Lewis it is
difficult to speak in terms other than superlative. Those of my readers
who have suffered the misfortune of not having seen him, may gain some
idea of his execution of the part from the illustrations to Mr. Belloc's
novels. The Duke was an extraordinarily good likeness of the Duke of
Battersea, as portrayed by Chesterton, with rather more than a touch of
Mr. Asquith superadded. Mr. Fred Lewis, it may be stated, gagged freely,
introducing topical lines until the play became a revue in little--but
without injustice to the original. Several of those who saw _Magic_ came
for a third, a fourth, even a tenth time.

The Editor of The Dublin Review had the happy idea of asking Chesterton
to review _Magic_. The result is too long to quote in full, but it
makes two important points which may be extracted.

I will glide mercifully over the more glaring
errors, which the critics have overlooked--as that
no Irishman could become so complete a cad merely
by going to America--that no young lady would walk
about in the rain so soon before it was necessary
to dress for dinner--that no young man, however
American, could run round a Duke's grounds in the
time between one bad epigram and another--that
Dukes never allow the middle classes to encroach
on their gardens so as to permit a doctor's lamp
to be seen there--that no sister, however
eccentric, could conduct a slightly frivolous
love-scene with a brother going mad in the next
room--that the Secretary disappears half-way
through the play without explaining himself; and
the conjuror disappears at the end, with almost
equal dignity. . . .

By the exercise of that knowledge of all human
hearts which descends on any man (however
unworthy) the moment he is a dramatic critic, I
perceive that the author of _Magic_ originally
wrote it as a short story. It is a bad play,
because it was a good short story. In a short
story of mystery, as in a Sherlock Holmes story,
the author and the hero (or villain) keep the
reader out of the secret. . . . But the drama is
built on that grander secrecy which was called the
Gr