unnecessary to invent it. It has done little enough for France or French literature. Happily it has had small influence in refining the language or in "fixing the type." The sense of order and the deftness of expression, which distinguish the journeywork of France, are the result not of Academic inspiration, but of the national character. When Mr Matthew Arnold described the French Academy as "a sovereign organ of the highest literary opinion, a recognised authority in matters of intellectual tone and taste," he spoke, we take it, either with imperfect knowledge or with exaggerated sympathy. The French Academy is sovereign only over itself. Its authority is recognised by its members and its beneficiaries alone. During the many years of its existence it has initiated no new movement, it has given no new impulse. French literature would be to-day very much what it is if Richelieu had never founded his Academy. Genius is free of the world. Even talent grows more rapidly beyond the shadow of fostering walls. And if we must define the French Academy, we should say that it is the smallest and most exclusive club in France, whose age and tradition should keep it always in respect, and whose customs are a pleasant interlude in the life of an intellectual people.

We cannot, therefore, agree with those who would mark their disapproval of the British Academy by attempting to organise a literary academy

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on some such basis as has proved effective and stable in foreign countries." They might as well plough the sand or try to harness the wind. For good or evil the English temperament is anarchical. It will not easily submit to restraints or acknowledge sovereignties. No one in Great Britain would be one whit the better for an Academy save the lucky Forty, whose pride would be solaced by a green collar. One thing only is certain: if we followed the example of France the literature of England would henceforth be the plaything of intrigue. The mere mention of an Academy arouses a hundred quick susceptibilities. Who shall appoint the first members? Who shall devise

we

The first a proper charter? step, says Mr Hewlett, justly jealous of his position, would be "to call a general meeting of the Society of Authors, in whose competence it would be to decide whether or not it would delegate its privileges to another body." With all respect to Mr Hewlett, should resent the interference of the Society of Authors as deeply as we resent the excessive zeal of the British Academy. The Society of Authors is in no sense representative. There are many authors who are not members of it; it has enrolled many members who are not authors. The essential principle of any Academy is co-option; and if we were ever rash enough to establish in this country a club of forty men of letters, the wisest plan would be to

ask the Prime Minister or the President of the Royal Society, or the Master of Trinity or any other functionary, to appoint the first six members, and let them perform the ungrateful task of adding thirtyfour to their number. But we have too firm a faith in the good sense of England to believe that we shall venture to throw chains, even of gold, upon our unfettered literature. "When a literature has produced Shakespeare and Milton," - to quote Matthew Arnold's sound conclusion,"when it has even produced Barrow and Burke, it cannot well abandon its traditions; it can hardly begin at this late time of day with an institution like the French Academy. I think that academies with a limited, special, scientific scope, in the various lines of intellectual work, . we may with time, and probably shall, establish. And no doubt they will do good." Matthew Arnold was wise as well as prophetic, and for our part we wish no more ambitious body to be established in our midst than the British Academy, which, if it add discretion to its many admirable qualities, will efficiently represent the learning and and scholarship of Great Britain.

The report on the Censorship of Stage Plays, which has just been issued as a Blue-book, will always hold a place apart in the literature of Parliamentary Committees. From beginning to end the argument is sustained at a very high level.

One or two dramatic authors assumed a somewhat pompous air, as though they were Sir Oracles in whose presence no dog should bark, and thus disturbed the harmony of the discussion. One of the Committee, Mr Harcourt, too obviously a partisan, insisted somewhat tediously in driving home his points. For the rest we have nothing but frank admiration. In Mr Samuel, as in Lords Plymouth and Ribblesdale, the world has lost examining counsel of extraordinary merit. Truly it may be said that they have given up to mankind what was meant for the law courts. The grasp they showed of the questions which purported to be at issue was matched only by the skill wherewith they elicited information from the witnesses. Where all is so good it is perhaps invidious to particularise. But there is a passage in which Lord Ribblesdale, following the Socratic method, induces Mr Barker to admit that "to talk of the expert in moral questions is a contradiction in terms," to assent that it is no use expecting anything like expert opinions or expert knowledge in moral ideas from any one person or any body, and at the same time to express his willingness to believe in the competence of local authorities to decide these very delicate questions. It was admirably done, and was only one instance of many in which the men of the world proved themselves superior in argument to the men of the theatre.

And the three hundred pages of the Blue - book are all the better because they have the remotest touch with reality. We have never encountered a better example of talk for talking's sake. Several grave personages came to the committee-room to air a grievance, and it is impossible to read the evidence without coming to the conclusion that no grievance exists. For many years we have heard vague stories concerning the infamy of the Censor. Lurid pictures have been painted of stifled genius, of a great dramatic revival checked only by the infamy of one man the reader of plays. At last the facts are out, and we know the worst of Mr Redford. In fourteen years he has read 7000 plays, and he has rejected only 30, of which no more than 5 are English. Thus we may measure accurately the weight of the blow which he has struck at the British drama. Five English plays in fourteen years have been withheld from expectant audiences, and Mr Redford's effigy is still unburnt! Surely the British spirit is weakening, or we should long ago have had another Guy Fawkes!

Disappointed in numbers, the enemies of the Censor instantly shifted their ground. "The argument from numbers," said Mr Archer, "is no argument at all." He cannot so easily escape from a false position. Though of course we must take the character of the rejected plays into consideration, obviously a Censor who makes few mistakes is better

than a Censor who makes many. Even county councils are fallible, and Mr Redford, though he was evidently a bad witness, came out triumphantly from his ordeal. Mr Archer's contention that the Censor's standard would have ruled out "Hamlet" and "Othello" is beside the point. The Censor has no control over the works of Shakespeare, and he is not likely to have a modern "Hamlet" or a modern "Othello" submitted to him. At any rate, we shall do the eminent authors, whose works he has suppressed, no injustice if we esteem them considerably below the level of Shakespeare. An irreparable harm has not been done to the English stage by depriving it of Mr Barker's "Waste," Mr Garnett's "Breaking Point," or Mr Shaw's farce, "Press Cuttings," whose offence went no deeper than the names of the characters, and might have been removed by a stroke of the pen.

But we are told the harm inflicted by the Censor upon the stage may not be measured by what he has done or left undone. The fact of his existence is said to cast a slur upon the good faith and good morals of a respectable class. This cannot be admitted, unless we admit also that the existence of the gallows is an open insult to the peaceful, law-abiding citizen. Another argument brought forward again and again on behalf of the illtreated dramatist, was that the Censor threw an obstacle in the path of his fancy. We heard once more the sad

fable, invented many years ago by Mr Grant Allen, of the Man Who Was Not Allowed. "The Censorship," wrote Mr Wells, "with its quite wanton power of suppression, has always been one of the reasons why I haven't ventured into play-writing." The stage, no doubt, is the poorer for Mr Wells' lack of enterprise, but the fact that the Censorship is one of several checks upon him is the very poorest excuse that ever we heard for a change in a simple and necessary law. In brief, as we read the discussion, we are reminded of the immortal contest which once divided the big-endians and the little-endians.

So witness after witness complained of what the Censor might do, acknowledging meanwhile that the actual restraint which he had exercised amounted to little or nothing. For instance, one of Mr Barker's objections was that he had recently accepted a play for performance at his theatre, but was obliged to make the Censor's approval a condition of its acceptance. The hardship does not seem to us intolerable, nor does the motive of the play as described by Mr Barker the love of a man for his father's young wife-persuade us that a heavy blow would be struck at the art of drama if it were suppressed. Such are the worst things that hostile witnesses could bring against the Censor-and the inquiry, but for its own sake, was, as we have said, not worth holding. Nor could any of the ardent spirits explain

how it was that, if the Censor exerted an evil influence on the English drama, the English drama had not for many years been in a more flourishing condition than to day. On this point there seems to be unanimity. The drama, said Mr Archer, is proceeding rapidly. Mr Barker, asked if he thought that there was "a growth of improvement in public taste in the matter of theatres," replied, "What I should call improvement— yes." Then why complain? Does it not seem as though these grave dramatists, devoid of humour, have thought upon their imagined grievances until they have become moral hypochondriacs?

For Mr Barker we have the very greatest respect. He is without doubt the greatest stage-manager of his time. He has had the courage to suppress the vulgar scenery which for many years has been the curse of our theatre. None has known better than he how to impose a salutary discipline upon the wayward body of actors and actresses. We should like to see him the untrammelled manager of a great theatre. We are the more sorry, therefore, constantly to disagree with him. His opinion, that the law which now applies to the publication of printed matter might simply be transferred to the theatre, is but another proof of the clamant necessity of the Censor. tween what is read in the study and seen on the stage there is no possibility of comparison. That which you read alone has

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not the same effect upon you as that which you hear and see in the presence of others. The theatre is a place of common resort; the pleasure it affords is a pleasure taken in common; and to pretend that a book read and a play performed are in any degree analogous is to forget the spirit of the crowd. It was this point which Mr Walkley most lucidly emphasised, and it is enough of itself to justify the Censor. The crowd is a collection of men and women who act and think and suffer collectively, as they never act, think, or suffer individually. No one who has had the misfortune to see what is called an "improper" play will misunderstand the part which the crowd plays in his discomfort. In truth, experience and argument point in the same direction. The stage must be controlled by other laws than those which govern printed books, and the least irksome method of restraint that has yet been invented is the censorship.

Mr Redford is not omniscient. He has made mistakes. He would not be human if he had not. If we carried Mr Archer's assertion that "there ought not to be an office which causes injustice to any citizen to its logical conclusion, we should be forced to abolish every office that exists upon this earth. The millennium is not yet, and if the Censor is guilty of an occasional indiscretion, he errs with all his fellow-men. At any rate none of the substitutes suggested would relieve the playwright,

or

safeguard the audience. To take proceedings after the first performance is a cumbersome method which would entail a vast expense upon the management and prove a disastrous check to theatrical enterprise. Nor would the punishment meted out to the offender be so light as the mere suppression of a play. It is not many years ago that an actor-manager in Paris, where the Censor is unknown, was very justly sent to prison, where he assumed the airs of a martyr, and declared that he suffered in the cause of art. Mr Barker, an enthusiast for the representative principle, would accept the opinion of the Town Councils of England. The tyranny of many is less enlightened than the tyranny of one, and the necessity of procuring a separate licence in every town would prove an intolerable burden. It would destroy for once and for always the system of touring companies, and it is not surprising that the managers of theatres are almost unanimous in favour of keeping the present system of censorship. Thus they protect their enterprise against the wayward assaults of Town Councils, and are confident in the reflection that Manchester will not suppress that which London has tolerated.

The conclusions of the Committee are not altogether so happy as its conduct of the inquiry. They lack simplicity and uniformity. There is no insistence of a like treatment of all cases. In the first place