Yet it
is none the less fine on this account, and we are glad that this old lady
has been given a place in art. The volume is, on the whole, delightful
reading, and though not much can be said for lines like these:

There _cometh_ from the West
The timid starry _bands_,

still, the translations are in many instances most felicitous and their
style most pleasing.

Greek Lays, Idylls, Legends, etc. Translated by E. M. Edmonds. (Trubner
and Co.)

OLIVIA AT THE LYCEUM

(Dramatic Review, May 30, 1885.)

Whether or not it is an advantage for a novel to be produced in a
dramatic form is, I think, open to question. The psychological analysis
of such work as that of Mr. George Meredith, for instance, would probably
lose by being transmuted into the passionate action of the stage, nor
does M. Zola's formule scientifique gain anything at all by theatrical
presentation. With Goldsmith it is somewhat different. In The Vicar of
Wakefield he seeks simply to please his readers, and desires not to prove
a theory; he looks on life rather as a picture to be painted than as a
problem to be solved; his aim is to create men and women more than to
vivisect them; his dialogue is essentially dramatic, and his novel seems
to pass naturally into the dramatic form. And to me there is something
very pleasurable in seeing and studying the same subject under different
conditions of art. For life remains eternally unchanged; it is art
which, by presenting it to us under various forms, enables us to realise
its many-sided mysteries, and to catch the quality of its most
fiery-coloured moments. The originality, I mean, which we ask from the
artist, is originality of treatment, not of subject. It is only the
unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he
makes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything.

Looking in this light at Mr. Wills's Olivia, it seems to me a very
exquisite work of art. Indeed, I know no other dramatist who could have
re-told this beautiful English tale with such tenderness and such power,
neither losing the charm of the old story nor forgetting the conditions
of the new form. The sentiment of the poet and the science of the
playwright are exquisitely balanced in it. For though in prose it is a
poem, and while a poem it is also a play.

But fortunate as Mr. Wills has been in the selection of his subject and
in his treatment of it, he is no less fortunate in the actors who
interpret his work. To whatever character Miss Terry plays she brings
the infinite charm of her beauty, and the marvellous grace of her
movements and gestures. It is impossible to escape from the sweet
tyranny of her personality. She dominates her audience by the secret of
Cleopatra. In her Olivia, however, it is not merely her personality that
fascinates us but her power also, her power over pathos, and her command
of situation.