in an age that elects its great men with a
charming indecision of touch. The general prejudice against the
granting of freeholds has spread to the desired lands of fame; and
where our profligate ancestors were willing to call a man great in
perpetuity, we, with more shrewdness, prefer to name him a genius for
seven years. We know that before that period may have expired fate
will have granted us a sea-serpent with yet more coils, with a
yet more bewildering arrangement of marine and sunset tints, and the
conclusion of previous leases will enable us to grant him undisputed
possession of Parnassus. If our ancestors were more generous they
were certainly less discriminate; and it cannot be doubted that many
of them went to their graves under the impression that it is possible
for there to be more than one great man at a time! We have altered
all that.

For two years Dale was a great man, or rather the great man, and it
is probable that if he had not died he would have held his position
for a longer period. When his death was announced, although the
notices of his life and work were of a flattering length, the
leaderwriters were not unnaturally aggrieved that he should have
resigned his post before the popular interest in his personality was
exhausted. The Censor might do his best by prohibiting the
performance of all the plays that the dead man had left behind him;
but, as the author neglected to express his views in their columns,
and the common sense of their readers forbade the publication of
interviews with him, the journals could draw but a poor
satisfaction from condemning or upholding the official action. Dale's
regrettable absence reduced what might have been an agreeable clash
of personalities to an arid discussion on art. The consequence was
obvious. The end of the week saw the elevation of James Macintosh,
the great Scotch comedian, to the vacant post, and Dale was
completely forgotten. That this oblivion is merited in terms of his
work I am not prepared to admit; that it is merited in terms of his
personality I indignantly wish to deny. Whatever Dale may have been
as an artist, he was, perhaps in spite of himself, a man, and a man,
moreover, possessed of many striking and unusual traits of character.
It is to the man Dale that I offer this tribute.

Sprung from an old Yorkshire family, Charles Stephen Dale was yet
sufficient of a Cockney to justify both his friends and his enemies
in crediting him with the