things which cannot be done, of thoughts and moods and subconscious
states which cannot be exprest on the stage and which can be exprest in
the novel. In earlier ages, which could do with a narrow range of vivid
sensations, the drama sufficed; it will not suffice for an age which
wants an illimitable range of sensations, and, being quick in the
uptake, can dispense with vividness." And then the brilliant critic of
the London _Times_ dwelt on the meagerness of Ibsen's 'Master-Builder'
when contrasted with "the extraordinarily complicated texture of subtle
thoughts and minute sensations" in Mr. James's 'Wings of the Dove.'

It may as well be confest frankly that, even in the twenty-first
century, the playhouse is unlikely to be hospitable to an
"extraordinarily complicated texture of subtle thoughts and minute
sensations"; but we may ask also if the playhouse will really be very
much poorer by this inhospitality. Even tho a small subdivision of the
public shall find a keen pleasure in them, there are other things in
life than subtle thoughts and minute sensations; there are larger
aspects of existence than those we find registered either in the 'Wings
of the Dove' or in the 'Master-Builder.' The texture of Mr. James's book
may be more complicated than that of Ibsen's play; but this is not
entirely because one is a novel and the other a drama. Both works fail
in breadth of appeal; they are narrow in their outlook on life, however
skilful in craftsmanship they may be, each in its own way; they are
devised for the dilettants, for the men of cultivation, and for these
mainly; and that way danger lies. Taine dwelt on the disintegration
impending when artists tended to appeal to the expert rather than to the
public as a whole. "The sculptor," so he declared, "no longer addresses
himself to a religious, civic community, but to a group of isolated
lovers of the art." In the future as in the past, the appeal of the
playwright must be to the main body of his contemporaries, even tho this