e_ and in _Clayhanger_ threatened to shatter the perspective; and
has concentrated on the matter in hand with enormous advantage to the
dramatic sharpness and distinctness of his story.

He has made a further gain in intensity by using the story of
Clayhanger as a background to the present story. The technical
difficulty in all creative literature is a difficulty of language and
symbols--the difficulty of so speaking to the reader that he may see
moods, moments, situations, concurrences of life and forces of passion
in the fine, dry, intense light in which the author has seen them.
That is the infinite difficulty of all literature--to find a language
and to create an atmosphere which may become familiar to the reader
without becoming commonplace. How much do we gain in the reading of
Shakespeare by the fact that from the sheer poetry of the thing we
have been compelled to read him a score of times! How fully the Greek
dramatists understood that to be instantly appreciated they must deal
with stories every detail of which was stored with friendly
associations for the audience!

Mr. Bennett elicits something of this effect of the marvellous from
the familiar by putting the life-story of Hilda Lessways on a
foreground behind which lies the already familiar story of Edwin
Clayhanger. We remember Clayhanger living in the printing shop in the
Potteries; his uncouthness, his shyness, his pertinacity; his desire
to be an architect and to live the imaginative life, thwarted by his
grim old father; and the manner in which Hilda dawned upon him,
entered into his experience in a brief rapture of passion, and
disappeared, leaving Clayhanger to grope again with the commonplaces.
And in this new story we see the life of the girl, the woman; she,
too, groping among the commonplaces, with her heart set upon a wider
experience, till a moment comes when her story coincides with and is
complementary to that of Clayhanger. The speeches which we heard her
make in the earlier story are heard again here, with greater
comprehension; the apparently trifling words which fell from the lips
of Clayhanger, scarcely heeded, are heard again now, and heard as they
sounded to Hilda, grasping after a purpose and a fulfilment of
herself.

Mr. Bennett has endeavoured to examine the mind and heart of this
woman from the inside. Whether the machinery of the emotions, the
will, and the intellect really do work out just like this is a matter
harder for a m