s knocked Brown over and killed him.

He had, as I afterwards learned, made a will in which he appointed me
his literary executor. Thus passed into my hands the unfinished play by
whose name he had become known to so many people.

I hate to say that I was disappointed in it, but I had better confess
quite frankly that, on the whole, I was. Had Brown written it quickly
and read it to me soon after our first talk about it, it might in some
ways have exceeded my hopes. But he had become for me, by reason of that
quiet and unhasting devotion to his work while the years came and went,
a sort of hero; and the very mystery involving just what he was about
had addicted me to those ideas of magnificence which the unknown is said
always to foster.

Even so, however, I am not blind to the great merits of the play as it
stands. It is well that the writer of poetic drama should be a dramatist
and a poet. Here is a play that abounds in striking situations, and I
have searched it vainly for one line that does not scan. What I nowhere
feel is that I have not elsewhere been thrilled or lulled by the same
kind of thing. I do not go so far as to say that Brown inherited his
parents' deplorable lack of imagination. But I do wish he had been less
sensitive than he was to impressions, or else had seen and read fewer
poetic dramas ancient and modern. Remembering that visionary look in
his eyes, remembering that he was as displeased as I by the work of all
living playwrights, and as dissatisfied with the great efforts of the
Elizabethans, I wonder that he was not more immune from influences.

Also, I cannot but wish still that he had faltered in his decision
to make no scenario. There is much to be said for the theory that a
dramatist should first vitalise his characters and then leave them
unfettered; but I do feel that Brown's misused the confidence he reposed
in them. The labour of so many years has somewhat the air of being
a mere improvisation. Savonarola himself, after the First Act or so,
strikes me as utterly inconsistent. It may be that he is just complex,
like Hamlet. He does in the Fourth Act show traces of that Prince. I
suppose this is why he struck Brown as having become 'more human.' To me
he seems merely a poorer creature.

But enough of these reservations. In my anxiety for poor Brown's sake
that you should not be disappointed, perhaps I have been carrying
tactfulness too far and prejudicing you against that for which I