ntegrity. He was soothed by the sound of his own voice repeating
them. He caught as it were an echo of the majestic harmonies that
once floated through his lecture-room at Lazarus. "Besides," he went
on, "where will you find your drama to begin with?"

"In modern men and women."

"But modern men and women are essentially undramatic, _and_ unpoetic."

"Still, I must take them, because, you see, there's nothing else to
take. There never was or will be. The men and women of Shakespeare's
time were modern to him, you know. If they seem poetic to us, that's
because a poet made them so; and he made them so because he saw
that--essentially--they _were_ so."

Jewdwine pushed out his lips in the manner of one unwillingly dubious.

"My dear Rickman, you have got to learn your limitations; or if not
your limitations, the limitations made for you by the ridiculous and
unlovely conditions of modern life."

"I have learnt them. After all, what am I to do? I _am_ modern--modern
as my hat," said Rickman, turning it in his hands. "I admit that my
hat isn't even a fugitive form of the eternal and absolute beauty. It
is, I'm afraid, horribly like everybody else's hat. In moments of
profound insight I feel that _I_ am horribly like everybody else. If
it wasn't for that I should have no hope of achieving my modest
ambition."

"I'm not saying anything against your modesty or your ambition. I'm
not defying you to write a modern blank verse play; but I defy anybody
to act one."

"I know," said Rickman, "it's sad of course, but to the frivolous mind
of a critic there always will be something ridiculous in the notion of
blank verse spouted on the stage by a person in a frock-coat and a
top-hat. But do you think you'd see that frock-coat and top-hat if
once the great tragic passions got inside them?"

"Where _are_ the great tragic passions?"

"They exist and are poetic."

"As survivals only. They are poetic but not modern. We have the
passions of the divorce-court and the Stock Exchange. They are modern,
if you like, but not strikingly poetic."

"Well--even a stock-broker--if you insist on stockbrokers--"

"I don't. Take the people--take the women I know, the women you know.
Is there--honestly, is there any poetry in them?"

"There is--heaps. Oceans of poetry--There always has been and will be.
It's the poets, the great poets that don't turn up to time."

"Well; I don't care how great a poet you may be. Modern poetic drama
is t