_as in the murder of Colonel Geraldine's brother_, _the
horror of which never seems to come fully home to us_. But let no one
suppose these stories are lacking in vividness and in strangely realistic
detail; for this is of the very nature of dreaming at its height. . . .
While the _dramatis personae_ play their parts with the utmost spirit
while the story proceeds, they do not, as the past creations do, seem to
survive this first contact and live in our minds. This is particularly
true of the women. They are well drawn, and play the assigned parts well
enough, but they do not, as a rule, make a place for themselves either in
our hearts or memories. If there is an exception it is Elvira, in
_Providence and the Guitar_; but we remember her chiefly by the one
picture of her falling asleep, after the misadventures of the night, at
the supper-table, with her head on her husband's shoulder, and her hand
locked in his with instinctive, almost unconscious tenderness."

CHAPTER XXVII--MR G. MOORE, MR MARRIOTT WATSON AND OTHERS

From our point of view it will therefore be seen that we could not have
read Mr George Moore's wonderfully uncritical and misdirected diatribe
against Stevenson in _The Daily Chronicle_ of 24th April 1897, without
amusement, if not without laughter--indeed, we confess we may here quote
Shakespeare's words, we "laughed so consumedly" that, unless for Mr
Moore's high position and his assured self-confidence, we should not
trust ourselves to refer to it, not to speak of writing about it. It was
a review of _The Secret Rose_ by W. B. Yeats, but it passed after one
single touch to belittling abuse of Stevenson--an abuse that was
justified the more, in Mr Moore's idea, because Stevenson was dead. Had
he been alive he might have had something to say to it, in the way, at
least, of fable and moral. And when towards the close Mr Moore again
quotes from Mr Yeats, it is still "harping on my daughter" to undo
Stevenson, as though a rat was behind the arras, as in _Hamlet_.
"Stevenson," says he, "is the leader of these countless writers who
perceive nothing but the visible world," and these are antagonistic to
the great literature, of which Mr Yeats's _Secret Rose_ is a survival or
a renaissance, a literature whose watchword should be Mr Yeats's
significant phrase, "When one looks into the darkness there is always
something there." No doubt Mr Yeats's product all along the line ranks
with the great li