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sternly fixed upon the realities of life, shows us the humours of his friends, and pictures for our undying amusement the fun and frolic of the fair. Dekker and Middleton bid us accompany them to Paul's, sketch for us the manners and customs of the citizens, and invite us into the society of the canting crew. Heywood bears us off to the English countryside, where honest squires go go a-hawking, or to Plymouth Hoe, whence Hawkins and Raleigh, and many another brave adventurer, set out for the land of golden dreams.

Briefly, all England and all England's ambitions are caught in the net of the Elizabethan drama, with much else besides which had its origin in the kingdom of fancy or in the Italy of the Renaissance, that land of strange promise, whither our youth went eagerly to learn wisdom, and whence, if we may believe Ascham, they returned with murder and atheism in their heart. And of the most of the dramatists who have woven their spell about us we know little or nothing. Ben Jonson alone, too fierce egoist to lie hid, has revealed himself to us with the aid of Hawthornden. Rumour says that Marlowe was killed in a tavern brawl, but rumour may lie. Webster and Cyril Tourneur, two men of genius, are names and no more. What matters it? Are not their masterpieces at hand to tell us all that we would hear of

an

them? Shakespeare, of whom we know far more than of most, is yet so secret a personage that certain lawyers and other persons, wholly unacquainted with literature, pretend that Bacon wrote his works. And thus we arrive at one moral quality that these men of genius had in common. They were not self-conscious. They did not ask that the limelight of publicity should be ever upon their brows. They did their work, and better work did men never, and escaped notice. Ardent as they were, it was for life that they burned, not for the silly consolation of notoriety. They fought with sword, as with tongue. Ben Jonson says that he beat Marston and took his pistol from him. Whether this be true or not, it is certain that Jonson escaped the gallows only by benefit of clergy. Fierce in temper as in genius, the contemporaries of Shakespeare were poles apart from the novelists of to-day, who have rashly been pronounced their legitimate successors, who dwell quietly in clubs, and who are splendidly be-paragraphed in the daily papers.

Apart from them all stands Shakespeare. It was not for him to paint the manners of his age. If you compare him with Ben Jonson, for instance, how remote he seems from England and his century! The emotions which he portrays, the characters which he depicts, are not English but human, not contemporary but universal. He dwells in fancy

on the sea-coast of Bohemia, and even when he carries us off to the taverns of Eastcheap he confronts us with men of heroic mould. It is this detachment from time and place which helps to explain his universal appeal. The flower of his poetry withers not with time. It smells sweet and blossoms still in the dust of three hundred years.

But if his contemporaries fell, one and all, below their master, they shared his heritage of verse. They are poets, inventors of harmonies, makers of phrases. They understood the rhetoric of drama as none has understood it since Eschylus. They knew that their lines were to be spoken and heard, and they fashioned them for the ear.

"And ride in triumph through Perse

polis!

Usumcasane and Theridamas,
Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles?

Is it not passing brave to be a king, And ride in triumph through Persepolis?"

With such haunting music as echoes in these lines did Marlowe herald the drama. And such music still haunts the verse of Webster and Ford when the drama was hastening to its decline. The Elizabethan convention can never be revived. It was dead already when Otway retouched it. And is there nothing that we can put in its place?-nothing but chairs and tables and fine clothes and pompous trappings which flatter the eye, and the poor tame prose which leaves the most timid ear still unsatisfied?

THE CONFERENCE AND ITS SEQUEL.

FEW can fail to be impressed by the silence which has reigned during the last few months in the arena of political controversy. It has served to show us how well we can dispense with the noisy clash of combative oratory and it is not perhaps too much to hope that recent experience may have taught us that the incessant din of political warfare which has increased so enormously in recent years may, with no disadvantage, be restricted to something like the proportions deemed sufficient a generation ago. The "truce of God," that has relieved our Cabinet Ministers from the task of perpetual peripatetic oratory, may perhaps inspire in them the thought that their administrative duties might well claim a larger share of attention than it has recently been the fashion to accord to them. We are not without persuasion that the period the period of happy calm has given the nation time and opportunity to think, and that this opportunity has not been hindered by the fact that the prejudices of violent partisanship have not been excited by the stimulus of the platform. Those who watch the quiet development of public opinion, now that the great master-current of common-sense, which serves to steady our course, has had time to operate, cannot fail to observe that a change has come

VOL. CLXXXVIII.-NO. MCXL.

over the judgment of the nation since Parliament adjourned last April. If ever there was a time which proved that mature consideration might alter the tone of public feeling, and that opportunities for such consideration can be abandoned only with great danger, it has been during these last few months. No doubt the change has been immensely stimulated by the impression of that calamity which fell on us last May, when we were bereft of a personality of consummate tact and ripe experience, precisely at the moment when these qualities seemed most urgently required for the nation's needs. But such arresting circumstances must be reckoned by every statesman as amongst the elements which may at any time affect public opinion.

Never has warning been more strikingly afforded of the folly of abandoning any safeguard against hasty and ill-considered constitutional change. If a section of politicians was bent on reckless change six months ago, the events and the thoughts of the intervening period must have taught them that they have to reckon with a powerful bulwark of that caution inherent in our race.

We all know on official authority, which has exercised a wise parsimony in imparting information, that during this period the leaders of both parties have been considering the

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whole position and weighing carefully the constitutional questions which have emerged from the heated controversies of six months ago. By the same authority we are assured that sufficient progress has been made with these deliberations to render the continuance of the negotiations expedient. We are justified in assuming, as a matter of certainty, that in spite of all the confidence with which new proposals were propounded, further consideration has been found necessary; that the conviction has been brought home that the question could not be disposed of in the heated atmosphere of party controversy which prevailed a short time ago; that it has been felt that further inquiry might throw light upon the subject; and that the nation could not safely be committed to the expedients which had been suggested in the violence of the fight. This is no matter of conjecture. To suppose otherwise would be to take away any possible pretext for conference, and to assume that its object was dilatory, and nothing more.

We do not advance the faintest pretence of any knowledge of the progress of these negotiations, and we ascribe no weight at all to the frivolous gossip that, in the baser range of journalism, purports to pierce the confidences of the negotia

We discredit absolutely any such rumours. To treat them seriously would be to assume that those concerned in this most momentous inquest

are utterly unfit for the task they have undertaken, and have been guilty of a garrulity which would deprive their deliberations of any weight. No one can foretell the outcome of the Conference; if it could be foretold, it would thereby be worthless. If we give any attention at all to such rumours, it is not because we suspect a betrayal of confidence, but because they are straws that may show how the current of public opinion moves.

No

But this does not in the least prevent us from forecasting the problems which must very soon come before the ultimate tribunal of the nation, and from endeavouring to anticipate the shape in which they will present themselves, and the probable judgment which will be passed upon them by the sovereign people when it has had time to weigh them elsewhere than amid the tumult of party warfare. thing need prevent us from hazarding a conjecture as to the range of these problems, and from estimating how far they may involve issues, little contemplated when first this controversy was begun. We fancy that the fight may rage over an arena wide enough to astonish many who fondly fancied that a simple issue as to the relative powers of the two Houses of Parliament was all that was involved. In a striking speech in the session of 1909 Mr Balfour drew the urgent attention of the House of Commons to the fact that the issue then so lightly raised

was only one stage, and that a comparatively small one, in the great constitutional contest that might lie before us. The

then dominant majority was little in a mood to listen to such warnings. But we doubt whether the nation at large is any longer blind to the fact that it may, if ill-guided, be entering upon a sea of troubles, amidst the waves of which we may be tossed for many a year, and where a harbour may be found only after long and fateful struggles.

Let us examine, step by step, the issues which must come before the nation whatever be the result of any Conference -and let us see whether it is possible, with fair probability, to calculate the verdict.

To begin with, we do not think that any but a negligible part of the nation will hesitate about the answer to be given to the first question-Whether we are to be governed by one chamber or by two? We have had distinct declarations by the Prime Minister and his leading colleagues on the matter, firmly maintaining the two-chamber principle, and to these declarations the other members of the Cabinet have given that more or less explicit adhesion which, except in a body so heterogeneous

the present Government, would naturally have been as sumed in the case of every member of the Cabinet. There have been wild statements on the part of the Revolutionary and Socialist members of the Radical party; but they have

found no countenance from the Government, have gradually diminished in their fervour, and have doubtless been suppressed or kept in the background as a result of cogent advice tendered by local electioneering agents. If it was ever in danger of being misled, the nation has now recovered its sanity as regards this point, and has passed judgment on the reckless suggestions of revolutionary visionaries. On that broad question, at least, we are content to take the verdict the nation to

morrow.

And if this is so, are we to suppose that the nation which will not trust its destinies to a single chamber will be mad enough to make the second chamber worse than none at all-by transforming it into a specious sham? If, within the limit of a single Parliament, the will of one chamber is to be dominant and supreme, what possible security is thus obtained for the people? The House of Lords might delay for a session or two the passing of a Bill which they know must inevitably become law. They would do so merely in satisfaction of their own caprice, and in the petty hope that some complication or some unforeseen development-it may be some sudden revolution of opinion in the House of Commons might secure to them an apparent triumph. But the one pre-eminently important purpose of second chamber is to give to the people the right to pronounce

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