MILNE'S humour. The only question was whether an author so fastidiously
unstagey, who never underlines his intentions, would be able to accommodate
himself to the conditions of a medium that discourages the elliptical
method. Well, he did it, and very artfully. He began by making concessions
to the habits of his new audience. He wouldn't try them too high at first.
In the person of _Robert Crawshaw, M.P._ (Mr. NIGEL PLAYFAIR), he
introduced them to a more or less conventional type--exposed, it is true,
to a very unusual test of character but dealing with it as such a type was
bound to deal. Then, having inspired confidence, he created a rarer
atmosphere, and in _Denis Clifton_, a blend of solicitor and play-wright,
he produced a figure of fantasy whose delightfully irresponsible humour
might have found his audience a little shy at an earlier stage. There was a
real note of distinction, extraordinarily well maintained, in _Clifton's_
dialogue with _Crawshaw_ and the boy-clerk, and Mr. MILNE was particularly
fortunate to have the part interpreted by Mr. DION BOUCICAULT, who
developed qualities undreamed of in my previous estimation of his gifts.

When that inveterate cynic, _Anthony Clifton_, made a will (it is not Mr.
MILNE'S fault that, since he wrote his play before going out to the Front,
we have had two others turning on eccentric bequests) leaving £50,000 each
to two perfect strangers on the condition that they adopted the
preposterous name of Wurzel-Flummery, he hoped to have the grim
satisfaction of witnessing, from the grave, an exhibition of human
weakness. Of the two legatees--politicians on opposite sides of the
House--_Crawshaw_, whose whiskers gave him the air of a successful grocer
of the mid-Victorian period, found reasons sufficiently convincing to
himself for accepting the testator's terms; while _Richard Meriton_, who
had little besides his salary as an M.P., took the high line of proper
pride and declared his determination to refuse. Mr. MILNE, by the way, did
not specify the respective politics of these two, but I judge, from my