cause behind it is the whole
pressure of that love of love which is the youth of the world, which is
common to all the young, especially to those who swear they will die
bachelors and old maids. 'Love's Labour Lost' is filled with the same
energy, and there it falls even more definitely into the scope of our
subject since it is a comedy in rhyme in which all men speak lyrically
as naturally as the birds sing in pairing time. What the love of love is
to the Shakespearian comedies, that other and more mysterious human
passion, the love of death, is to 'L'Aiglon.' Whether we shall ever have
in England a new tradition of poetic comedy it is difficult at present
to say, but we shall assuredly never have it until we realise that
comedy is built upon everlasting foundations in the nature of things,
that it is not a thing too light to capture, but too deep to plumb.
Monsieur Rostand, in his description of the Battle of Wagram, does not
shrink from bringing about the Duke's ears the frightful voices of
actual battle, of men torn by crows, and suffocated with blood, but when
the Duke, terrified at these dreadful appeals, asks them for their final
word, they all cry together 'Vive l'Empereur!' Monsieur Rostand,
perhaps, did not know that he was writing an allegory. To me that field
of Wagram is the field of the modern war of literature. We hear nothing
but the voices of pain; the whole is one phonograph of horror. It is
right that we should hear these things, it is right that not one of them
should be silenced; but these cries of distress are not in life as they
are in modern art the only voices, they are the voices of men, but not
the voice of man. When questioned finally and seriously as to their
conception of their destiny, men have from the beginning of time
answered in a thousand philosophies and religions with a single voice
and in a sense most sacred and tremendous, 'Vive l'Empereur.'

CHARLES II

There are a great many bonds which still connect us with Charles II.,
one of the idlest men of one of the idlest epochs. Among other things
Charles II. represented one thing which is very rare and very
satisfying; he was a real and consistent sceptic. Scepticism both in its
advantages and disadvantages is greatly misunderstood in our time. There
is a curious idea abroad that scepticism has some connection with such
theories as materialism and atheism and secularism. This is of course a
mistake; the true sceptic has nothin