droitness and cleverness on their part, and supreme comic
genius on his. Probably it was this apparent similarity of Shakspere's
work and Moliere's to the uninspired efforts of their competitors which
prevented their contemporaries from discovering their preeminence--the
preeminence which is so obvious to us now that the plays of their
fellow-craftsmen have fallen out of memory.

The blindness of the contemporary critic of Shakspere and of Moliere,
inexplicable as it may appear nowadays, has its parallel in the
blindness of the contemporary critic in regard to 'Don Quixote' and 'Gil
Blas,' 'Robinson Crusoe' and the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' He had not the
insight to see in these comparatively commonplace narratives the
essential truth of the enduring masterpiece. He was seeking an outward
and visible sign; he saw nothing unusual, abnormal, eccentric, in these
books, nothing novel, nothing that cried aloud for recognition; and so
he past by on the other side. These books seemed to him in nowise raised
above the common; they were to be enjoyed in some measure, but they
evoked no high commendation; and the contemporary critic never suspected
that these unpretending volumes, unlike the most of their competitors in
public favor, contained the vital spark which alone bestows enduring
life. He failed wholly to guess that these books had in them the
elements of the universal and the permanent--just as he was unable to
perceive that the more obviously literary, rhetorical, academic works he
was ready enough to commend highly, lacked these elements and therefore
were doomed soon to sink into deserved oblivion.

This is precisely the attitude of many a critic of our own time. He is
looking for a literary drama which shall be different in kind from the
popular play; and as he fails to find this to-day--as he would have
failed to find it in every period of the theater's most splendid
achievement--he asserts that the literary drama is nowadays nonexistent.
He does not care to inquire into the genuine qualities of the plays that
happen to be able to attain "the standard of material prosperity." He is
quick to perceive the attempt to be literary in the plays of Mr.
Stephen Phillips, because this promising dramatic poet has so far tended
rather to construct his decoration than to decorate his construction:
and, therefore, the literary merit in Mr. Phillips's acted pieces seems
sometimes to be somewhat external, so to speak, or at least more