ostentatiously paraded. He is forced to credit 'Quality Street' with a
certain literary merit, because Mr. Barrie has published novels which
have an undeniable literary flavor.

Considering literary merit as something applied on the outside, too
obvious to be mistaken, the critic of this type disdains to give to
certain of the plays of Mr. Pinero the discussion they deserve. In the
'Benefit of the Doubt,' in the 'Second Mrs. Tanqueray,' in 'Iris,' Mr.
Pinero has used all his mastery of stage-craft, not for its own sake,
but as the instrument of his searching analysis of life as he sees it.
All three plays bring out the eternal truth of George Eliot's saying
that "Consequences are unpitying." In all three plays the inevitable and
inexorable catastrophe is brought about, not by "the long arm of
coincidence," but rather by the finger of fate itself. In 'Iris' more
particularly we have put before us the figure of a gentle and kindly
creature of compelling personal charm, but weak of will and moving thru
life along the line of least resistance--a feminine counterpart of the
Tito Melema etched with such appalling veracity in 'Romola.' And Mr.
Pinero has the same sincerity in his portrayal of the gradual
disintegration of character under the stress of recurring temptation,
until the woman is driven forth at last stript of all things that she
held desirable, and bare of the last shred of self-respect. The play may
be unpleasant, but it is profoundly moral. It is not spoon-meat for
babes, but it is poignant and vital. The picture of human character
betrayed by its own weakness is so true, so transparently sincere, that
the spectator, however quick he may be to discuss the theme, remains
unconscious of the art by which the wonder has been wrought; he gives
scarcely a thought to the logic of the construction, and to the honesty
with which character is presented--literary merits both of them, if
literature is in fact a criticism of life.

The shrewd remark of M. Jules Lemaitre must ever be borne in mind,--that
criticism of our contemporaries is not criticism, it is only
conversation. Yet there is sufficient self-revelation in the fact that
those who have been ready enough to praise the 'Lady of Lyons,' with its
tawdry rhetoric and its shabby morality, have not seen the superiority
of Mr. Pinero over Lord Lytton even as a stylist, as a master of
English, tense, nervous, and flexible, adjusting itself to the thought,
never protrud