Let me be cautious here, or some remarks I made the other day upon another poet—­Mr. Hosken, author of Phaon and Sappho, and Verses by the Way—­will be brought up against me.  Defending Mr. Hosken against certain critics who had complained of the lack of dramatic power in his tragedies, I said, “Be it allowed that he has little dramatic power, and that (since the poem professed to be a tragedy) dramatic power was what you reasonably looked for.  But an alert critic, considering the work of a beginner, will have an eye for the bye-strokes as well as the main ones:  and if the author, while missing the main, prove effective with the bye—­if Mr. Hosken, while failing to construct a satisfactory drama, gave evidence of strength in many fine meditative passages—­then at the worst he stands convicted of a youthful error in choosing a literary form unsuited to convey his thought.”

Not in the “Plays” only.

These observations I believe to be just, and having entered the caveat in Mr. Hosken’s case, I should observe it in Mr. Davidson’s also, did these five youthful plays stand alone.  But Mr. Davidson has published much since these plays first appeared—­works both in prose and verse—­Fleet Street Eclogues, Ninian Jamieson, A Practical Novelist, A Random Itinerary, Baptist Lake:  and because I have followed his writings (I think from his first coming to London) with the greatest interest, I may possibly be excused for speaking a word of warning.  I am quite certain that Mr. Davidson will never bore me:  but I wish I could be half so certain that he will in time produce something in true perspective; a fabric duly proportioned, each line of which from the beginning shall guide the reader to an end which the author has in view; something which

                                      “Servetur ad imum
     Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet.”

Sibi constet, be it remarked.  A work of art may stand very far from Nature, provided its own parts are consistent.  Heaven forbid that a critic should decry an author for being fantastic, so long as he is true to his fantasy.

But Mr. Davidson’s wit is so brilliant within the circles of its temporary coruscation as to leave the outline of his work in a constant penumbra.  Indeed, when he wishes to unburden his mind of an idea, he seems to have less capacity than many men of half his ability to determine the form best suited for conveying it.  If anything can be certain which has not been tried, it is that his story A Practical Novelist should have been cast in dramatic form.  His vastly clever Perfervid:  or_ the Career of Ninian Jamieson_ is cast in two parts which neither unite to make a whole, nor are sufficiently independent to stand complete in themselves.  I find it characteristic that his Random Itinerary—­that fresh and agreeable narrative of suburban travel—­should