R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

190 Harley Granville-Barkerdoes not run in search of obstructions, to be noisy over them: butwhere dead leaves and viler substances are heaped along the course,its natural song is heightened. Without effort, and with nodazzling flashes of achievement, it is full of healing; the wit ofgood breeding, the wit of wisdom.Strange qualities are they, for the author of One of ourConquerors and Lord Ormont and his Aminta to admire?There is the point: he did admire them (who does not?)and strove after them (again who does not?) as best hecould. The notion that such men as Meredith are wilfully,mischievously obscure is an impertinence. They havemuch to express and, left with themselves for an audience,the plain thing seems hardly worth saying, for it is knownalready. But let Meredith the talker start a bright idea,Meredith the listener will set him refining it, and refiningagain, twisting it this way and that till it is running exhaustedin a circle—a vicious circle—and, expressed atlast, may drop dead. This is the danger run by all men ofteeming minds, driven in on themselves by neglect. Theeasy popularity of the theatre brings worse dangers,heaven knows! He was little likely to have been caughtin these. See how he works and works for his privatesatisfaction on this fragment that was never to see thelight. But the theatre compels a man at least to thevirtues of lucidity, of simplicity, of economy. There is theaudience of average men and women, and you must makeyour meaning clear to them as you go along.And in losing Meredith, what did the theatre lose? Nogreat influence upon its course, perhaps. By the 'seventiesthe play of artifice had had its day; the ground wasfallow and ready for Ibsen and the 'naturalists' whenthey came. He would have stood in drama as in fiction,brilliantly alone! Very much, probably, as in Frenchdrama Rostand stands to-day; and Rostand is a childin artistic force beside him. He would have owned,perhaps, to kinship with Congreve; but not cordially. He