t a bit of it. The next century, if I'm not mistaken, will see a
pretty big flare up of a revolution; and the soul will come out on
top. Robespierre and Martin Luther won't be in it, Jewdwine, with the
poets of that school."

"I'm glad you feel able to take that view of it. I don't seem to see
the poets of the twentieth century myself."

"I see them all right," said Rickman, simply. "They won't be the poets
of Nature, like the nineteenth century chaps; they'll be the poets of
human nature--dramatic poets, to a man. Of course, it'll take a
revolution to produce that sort."

"A revolution? A cataclysm, you mean."

"No. If you come to think of it, it's only the natural way a healthy
poet grows. Look at Shakespeare. I believe, you know, that most poets
would grow into dramatic poets if they lived long enough. Only
sometimes they don't live; and sometimes they don't grow. Lyric poets
are cases of arrested development, that's all."

Jewdwine listened with considerable amusement as his subordinate
propounded to him this novel view. He wondered what literary enormity
Rickman might be contemplating now. That he had something at the back
of his mind was pretty evident. Jewdwine meant to lie low till, from
that obscure region, Rickman, as was his wont, should have brought out
his monster for inspection.

He produced it the next instant, blushingly, tenderly, yet with no
diminution of his sublime belief.

"You see--you'll think it sheer lunacy, but--I've a sort of idea that
if I'm to go on at all, myself, it must be on those lines. Modern
poetic drama--It's that or nothing, you know."

Jewdwine's face said very plainly that he had no doubt whatever of the
alternative. It also expressed a curious and indefinable relief.

"Modern poetic drama? So that's your modest ambition, is it?"

Rickman owned that indeed it was.

"My dear fellow, modern poetic drama is a contradiction in all its
terms. There are only three schools of poetry possible--the classic,
the romantic and the natural. Art only exists by one of three
principles, normal beauty, spiritual spontaneity, and vital mystery or
charm. And none of these three is to be found in modern life." These
were the laws he had laid down in the _Prolegomena to AEsthetics_,
which Rickman, in the insolence of his genius, had defied. Somehow the
life seemed to have departed from those stately propositions, but
Jewdwine clung to them in a desperate effort to preserve his critical
i