INTRODUCTION


The qualities that made Bronson Howard a dramatist, and then made him
the first American dramatist of his day, were his human sympathy, his
perception, his sense of proportion, and his construction. With his
perception, his proportion, and his construction, respectively, he could
have succeeded as a detective, as an artist, or as a general. It was his
human sympathy, his wish and his ability to put himself in the other
man's place, that made play-writing definitely attractive to him. As a
soldier he would have shown the courage of the dogged defender in the
trench or the calmly supervising general at headquarters, rather than
the mad bravery that carried the flag at the front of a forlorn hope.
His gifts were intellectual. His writing was more disciplined than
inspired. If we shall claim for him genius, it must be preferably the
genius of infinite pains.

He saw intimately and clearly. His proportion made him write with
discretion and a proper sense of cumulative emphasis, and his
construction enabled him so to combine his materials as to secure this
effect. He was intensely self-critical; and while almost without conceit
concerning his own work, he had an accuracy of detached estimation that
enabled him to stand by his own opinion with a proper inflexibility when
his judgment convinced him that the opinion was correct.

He worked slowly. At one time, in his active period, it was his custom
to go from New York, where he lived, to New Rochelle, where he had