slashed out of a tapestry; it cannot be a segment cut out of a picture. It must be a whole story-a whole tapestry--a whole picture.

Therefore, no matter what one may pretend, or what refined and elevated work one may assume, one cannot produce any work of art in fiction except by assembling elements and constructing something that is complete in itself.

One must have a plan of some character to begin with. If one would weave a tapestry one must have a design; if one would paint a picture one must first have a drawing; and if one would write a story one must have a plot or skeleton structure into which to put one's incidents.

It would be a strange doctrine that advised a tapestry weaver to go ahead without a design, or a painter to go ahead without a sketch or drawing; as well advise an architect to build. his house without a plan or a contractor to build a railroad without a survey.

If one will go into the Louvre, in Paris, or into any good art gallery, and examine the unfinished work of the great painters, one will find they began with the most careful and accurate drawings of the picture they intended to paint. If one takes down any great short story one will find it to be built on a plan equally laboriously constructed. The reader does not usually see this, as he does not see the painstaking drawings behind the picture; but, nevertheless, it is there.

It is a matter of profound regret that men of talent and culture in this country have got the idea that, Misguided in order to distinguish themselves from the talent common run of writers, they must avoid the very elements essential to the highest form of literature. Because surprise in the plot and virile incident have the widest appeal, and are therefore usually undertaken by the unskillful, these men have determined to avoid them altogether.

Alas! In doing so they abandon the highest forms of literature. Their publications, holding to this theory, must give up the whole people and confine themselves to a narrow circle of readers; and such writers must give up the whole people as readers of their works and be content with the few who

are of like opinion with themselves.

This is a great loss. The people lose the benefit of these men of advanced learning and culture, and these men lose the ear of the world. One may claim to have so much refinement that one ceases to be a factor in great affairs; and lesser men, who are not afraid to take hold of the realities of life. come in and supplant one.

In spite of every pretense the orator wishes to have a large audience, and the writer desires to have the whole people read his work. One may shut oneself up and pretend that the opinion of the world does not concern one; but one deceives oneself.

Meredith, when he was dying, lamented because the English Simplicity people did not read his books. It was his own wins the world fault. He chose an involved and unnatural style, in which things were purposely made difficult to understand rather than easy; and he suffered from it. He did not lack plot and tragic incident but his peculiarities became more marked as he grew older and his style more involved and difficult.

Long before him, Doctor Johnson pointed out that nothing unusual survives. Before him was the great example of King James' translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, showing how literature can always be simple, noble and of the highest order and yet plain to everybody. Chrysippus was an involved writer, as in our day is Mr. Henry James; and Epictetus said of him:

"When some one may exalt himself, in that he is able to understand and expound the works of Chrysippus, say then to thyself: 'If Chrysippus had not written obscurely this man would have had nothing whereon to exalt himself'."

If one points out the excellences of a work produced by men who do not believe in plot and tragic incident, he must remember, if these men do so well with literature of their kind, how wonderfully they would have done if they had dealt with the highest form of the short story. It is a fine thing to have the learning, the culture and the talent of these men; but it is an ill thing to put this ability to the delineation of

trifling things, lacking elements of universal interest.

If the unskilful, with a rough plot and badly assembled incidents, can get a hearing, these men, with skilful plots and properly assembled incidents, could reach and move the whole people. They would be a great force in our literature. They would be moving factors in our civilization. Their publications would flourish and their editions would be read by everybody.

Meet the

public's
demand

The basic element in the taste of the public is correct. The demand of the human mind for mystery or problem-something to unravel-is universal. It is the desire of everybody to know how persons will act in tragic situations; how men of individuality and power in high places will conduct themselves under certain conditions of stress. We shall never cease to be interested in these things, and the author who presents them to us will have our attention.

It has, therefore, happened in this country that the men who have had the foresight and courage to give the reading public these universal elements of interest in their fiction have built up great and prosperous publications, while those who have denied the public these elements of interest have fallen into bankruptcy.

Resolute editors, refusing to be influenced by the pretensions of the smaller dilettante class, have been able to run the circulation of their periodicals into incredible figures.

They have foreseen-what the great Greeks so conclusively knew that a piece of fiction, to interest the whole people, must have a plot containing surprises, and must be elaborated by virile incident. They have not been afraid to seek and encourage fiction of this character.

They have seen that fiction containing these elements, even though badly done, was of more interest to the people than excellently drawn character studies that do not get anywhere, or faithful portraiture of life that lacks unity and completeness.

These men would be glad if the fiction containing the organic elements of interest were better done. They would be glad to have faithful portraiture of life and excellent characteriza

tion in these stories, combined with the basic elements of universal interest; for if they had they would have not only the highest type but also the literature of widest appeal..

It is not in the hands of the cloistered professor of English, nor yet in the embalmed pages of the exclusive magazine pretending to have an elevated standard, that the future of our literature lies, but across the knees of the men who are going to the whole people with their publications.

These men are dealing with today. They are handling what Taine called the "hot vitals of life." They will not be bound by any Chinese veneration of old precedents. They will reject the exaggerated imagery of the Elizabethan Age as readily as the inanities of the Victorian, and as readily the complacent instructions of the newest British novelist.

Nor will they be bound by the excessive suppressions of a sterile dilettantism. They will insist that the language shall become clear, direct and virile, and that those who write must have a story in their heads to tell.

SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA

By JOHN GALSWORTHY

A drama must be shaped so as to have a spire of meaning. Every grouping of life and character has its inherent moral; and the business of the dramatist

The moral in a drama

is so to pose the group as to bring that moral poignantly to the light of day. Such is the moral that exhales from plays like Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth. But such is not the moral to be found in the great bulk of contemporary Drama. The moral of the average play is now, and probably has always been, the triumph at all costs of a supposed immediate ethical good over a supposed immediate ethical evil.

The vice of drawing these distorted morals has permeated the Drama to its spine; discoloured its art, humanity, and significance; infected its creators, actors, audience, critics; too often turned it from a picture into a caricature. A Drama which lives under the shadow of the distorted moral forgets how to be free, fair, and fine-forgets so completely that it often prides itself on having forgotten.

Now, in writing plays, there are, in this matter of the moral, three courses open to the serious dramatist.

Three courses

dramatist

The first is: To definitely set before the public for the that which it wishes to have set before it, the views and codes of life by which the public lives and in which it believes. This way is the most common, succcessful, and popular. It makes the dramatist's position sure, and not too obviously authoritative.

The second course is: To definitely set before the public those views and codes of life by which the dramatist himself lives, those theories in which he himself believes, the more effectively if they are the opposite of what the public wishes to

From The Inn of Tranquillity, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1919, by special arrangement with the publishers.

Mr. Galsworthy began publishing novels about 1897, and dramas ten years later. He prefers to deal with social problems, as the titles of plays such as Strife, Justice and Mob would suggest. In his many delightful essays he frequently theorizes about art.