directly is its directness; the life of a scene created simply is its
simplicity. And simplicity, directness, impetus, emotion, nature fall
out of the trailing, loose, long dialogue, like fish from the loose
meshes of a net--they fall out, they drift off, they are lost.

The universal slowness, moreover, is not good for metre. Even when an
actress speaks her lines as lines, and does not drop into prose by
slipping here and there a syllable, she spoils the _tempo_ by inordinate
length of pronunciation. Verse cannot keep upon the wing without a
certain measure in the movement of the pinion. Verse is a flight.




GRASS


Now and then, at regular intervals of the summer, the Suburb springs for
a time from its mediocrity; but an inattentive eye might not see why, or
might not seize the cause of the bloom and of the new look of humility
and dignity that makes the Road, the Rise, and the Villas seem suddenly
gentle, gay and rather shy.

It is no change in the gardens. These are, as usual, full, abundant,
fragrant, and quite uninteresting, keeping the traditional secret by
which the suburban rose, magnolia, clematis, and all other flowers grow
dull--not in colour, but in spirit--between the yellow brick house-front
and the iron railings. Nor is there anything altered for the better in
the houses themselves.