Soft kisses on his full, red lips I laid,
And with red roses did his tresses braid-

Then pure, white lilies on his breast I piled,
And fettered him with woodbine sweet and wild,
And fragrant armlets for his arms I made.
But while I, leaning, yearned across his breast,
Upright he sprang, and from swift hand, alert,
Sent forth a shaft that lodged within my heart.
Ah, had I never played with Love at rest,

He had not wakened, had not cast h's dart,
And I had lived who die now of this hurt.

One more extract and I have done. Here is a poem which should, in the ordinary way, have been noticed among the lyrics, but with which I prefer to conclude. It was written in Marston's last years, when ill-health and misfortune had had their cruel will of him; and pessimistic and hopeless though it be, it surely "voices the inarticulate cry of many a human heart?

ALAS!

Alas for all high hopes and all desires!

Like leaves in yellow autumn-time they fall-
Alas for prayers and psalms and love's pure fires-
One silence and one darkness ends them all!

Alas for all the world-sad fleeting race!

Alas, my Love, for you and me Alas!

Grim Death will clasp us in his close embrace-
We, too, like all the rest from earth must pass.

Alas to think we must forget some hours

Whereof the memory like Love's planet glows-
Forget them as the year her withered flowers—
Forget them as the June forgets the rose !

Our keenest rapture, our most deep despair,
Our hopes, our dreads, our laughter, and our tears

Shall be no more at all upon the air

No more at all, through all the endless years.

We shall be mute beneath the grass and dew

In that dark Kingdom where Death reigns in state

And you will be as I, and I as you—

One silence shed upon us, and one fate.

These lines of Marston's have a strange pathos to us who for the first time read them when the grass grows thick on his grave. It seems as if he must be still alive; as if the man who wrote them was too human to die; and as if death were not natural, but unnatural : as if it were some dreadful mistake which God has made, and which He will wake up and discover, before it is too late, and before our own time to die arrives.

VOL. CCLXXII.

No. 1933.

H

Death natural! No, it were as unnatural to tear a nestling babe from the bosom of its mother, and to cast it out into the night, as to drag us from the familiar breast of this dear old earth to which we cling-this earth with its love and friendship, and little children, its fields and flowers, sea and sky, sunlight and starshine, and sweet consolations of Art and Song-and hustle us away underground, hick-walled in a desolate dungeon of oozy clay, where never a human voice can reach us more, and where no sound but the stealthy writhing of the obscene worm breaks the black horror that wraps us round.

And yet, in other moods, it seems to me as if death were less like an iron and inexorable curtain of night, which has been let down between us and our lost ones, than like the dark blinds we set in our windows-blinds which from the outside look black and impenetrable, but which, from the inside, scarce serve to soften the light. And at such times I seem to sce-close-pressed against the windows of the House of Death into which he has entered-the face of Philip Marston loom out into the night, as he turns away, for one moment, from the joyful greeting of sister, mother, father, and friends, and steals a wistful glance at the sweet vain world he has left behind. He is lonely now no longer, and sadness has gone for ever from his brow; but in the once sightless eyes--sightless never again-there dwells a look of tender and infinite pity for us who have yet to face the mystery which he has solved.

I

PAGES ON PLAYS.

"BRAND."

NTEREST this month centres rather upon two printed than

upon any acted plays; upon the "Brand" of Henrik Ibsen and "The Profligate" of Mr. A. W. Pinero. To be the first to translate "Brand" into English is so far to deserve well of the country, and Mr. William Wilson may be complimented upon being the first to do a work that ought to have been done long ago. Through all the course of last year Ibsen was the most-talked-about man of letters in the world; it is not unfair to say that he was talked about most by those who knew him and his writings and his purposes least. Men whose entire knowledge of Ibsen was confined to the three translations in a volume of the Camelot classics, men to whom Norwegian was as unfamiliar as Chinese, vituperated Ibsen, which was bad, or championed him, which was scarcely better, on a superficial acquaintance with "Ghosts," "A Doll's House," and "The Pillars of Society." There are, of course, enthusiasts who would maintain that Ibsen might very well stand or fall by those three dramas; and, indeed, as dramas they are great enough to gain a wreath of glory that might well content even a not too modest ambition. But if "A Doll's House" and "The Pillars of Society" and even "Ghosts" were cut bodily out of Ibsen's work-could be handed over, let us imagine, by some strange freak of witchcraft, to swell the literary baggage of the old Bjornstjern or the young Heiberg, or given to equip some unknown dramatists with a title to renown-Ibsen's own fame would scarcely be affected by the loss. Ibsen would still remain one of the greatest dramatists, one of the greatest dramatic poets of the age. By virtue of "The Pretenders," of "The Vikings at Helgeland," of "Fru Inger of Ostrat," to say nothing of "The League of Youth" and "The Wild Duck," he would remain a great dramatist. By virtue of " Peer Gynt" and of "Brand," to say nothing of "Love's Comedy" and "The Feast at Solhaug," he would remain a great dramatic poet.

"Peer Gynt "

and "Brand" are, perhaps, the works upon which his fame chiefly depends in the Northern lands; yet now fo the first time we have

a version of one of these great poetic plays offered to us in English. "Peer Gynt," perhaps an even greater poem, has yet to be given the freedom of our English speech. I am glad to think that two writers so admirably qualified for the duty as Mr. William Archer and his brother are engaged upon the task, and that the result of their work will soon be published. In the mean time we have Mr. William Wilson-whose real name is something quite different gallantly seeking to fill up a gap in our literature of translation by his rendering of "Brand."

On the whole, Mr. William Wilson has done a serviceable, creditable piece of work. The result of his labours will be that many persons in this country will be enabled to scrape acquaintance with a great poem, to whom that poem had hitherto been a sealed book, nothing but a name. To have made this possible is to have rendered a sterling service, and so far very sincere thanks can be offered to Mr. William Wilson for his labour. Beyond this, however, the translation affords no great stimulus to enthusiastic commendation. The translation is in prose, which is certainly right. A great poem had better be translated into prose. There are exceptions when the translator is himself a child of genius, himself a poet. Coleridge's translation of Schiller's Wallenstein plays, Shelley's fragment of Goethe's "Faust," Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam's "Rubaiyat," these are three examples of the rare cases in which the translator was the peer of the translated. But for most of us the vehicle of translation should be prose. Yet there is prose and prose. According to a story current concerning Mr. Pater, prose is much more difficult to write than poetry, and the axiom is not so paradoxical as it might appear. The prose chosen for the interpretation into our language of a great poem, or great poetic book in another language, should be the finest prose in the world; it should be chosen with the exquisite care which makes the beauty of Rossetti's translation of the "Vita Nuova," of the "Odyssey" of Mr. Lang and Mr. Butcher, of the "Quintus Fixlein" of Carlyle, or the "Grettis Saga" of Mr. William Morris and Mr. Magnüsson. To the level of these fine examples of prose translation, a translation of "Brand" should come; to that level Mr. William Wilson's translation does not reach. Mr. Wilson seems to have taken little pains to make it reach such a level, seems to have contented himself with translating it straight off the reel, using the first word that came to hand, never deliberating, selecting, weighing. The whole result, if fairly accurate is commonplace; it would serve as a journeyman's crib to the original text; it will be better, very much better, than nothing to those

who really wish to know more of a great poet, but it can hardly be said to be an addition to literature. Mr. Wilson may make a better piece of work of it yet, if he goes over it again with patience and with pains. It will be well worth his trouble: to create a fine living English prose translation of "Brand" is a work of which a man might well be proud.

"THE

"THE PROFLIGATE."

"HE Profligate" marks a period in Mr. Pinero's literary history. It was the first-fruits of his resolve to treat life seriously; to the public it was the first proof of his determination to take himself seriously. The public, which had hitherto known Mr. Pinero principally as a wild humorist; the critics, who had noted in him chiefly a cynicism, found, in "The Profligate," that they were face to face with a moralist of the severest school, with a dramatist who was determined that the stage should compete with the pulpit as a platform for the expounder of the ethical canon. "The Profligate " was a greater success with its critics than with the public, even though to please that public Mr. Pinero sacrificed the ending, which to him appeared to be the only legitimate, the only possible ending. It was discussed with a keenness which till then had seldom been accorded to the creations of the contemporary stage; it aroused in its admirers a degree of enthusiasm which colder critics were unable to share. Now that the play is published by Mr. Heinemann for all the world to study, we may expect to see the old battle revived, to catch something of the old discussion, hear the shoutings of the old enthusiasts, the comments of the colder students. At least, in the volume before me there is full material for such discussion. The text of the play is restored to the original form in which it first came from Mr. Pinero's pen; its replaced ending points Mr. Pinero's moral, and defies the theorist of the happy conclusion. Mr. Malcolm Salaman, in an excellent introduction, which is a valuable document of stage history, supplies the substituted ending, the ending which was to have soothed the audience, on the principle which made managers in the last century fit happy endings to Shakespearean tragedy.

For mine own part I rather object to the title of the play. I cannot help regarding it as a misleading title. I have no thought of defending the character of Dunstan Renshaw, or palliating the despicable cowardice of seduction, when I suggest that the term "profligate" appears to me to suggest a character more markedly, more extensively, more abandonedly criminal than the hero of