“And Art,” continued Rickman, “is truth, just because it isn’t Nature.”

“If you mean,” said Jewdwine, seeking a formula, “that modern art is essentially subjective, I agree with you.”

“I mean that really virile and original art—­the art, I believe of the future—­must spring from the supreme surrender of Nature to the human soul.”

“And do you honestly believe that the art of the future will be one bit more ‘virile’ than the art of the present day?”

“On the whole I do.”

“Well, I don’t.  I see nothing that makes for it.  No art can hold out for ever against commercialism.  The nineteenth century has been commercial enough in all conscience, bestially, brutally commercial; but its commercialism and brutality will be nothing to the commercialism and brutality of the twentieth.  If these things are deadly to art now, they’ll be ten times more deadly then.  The mortality, among poets, my dear Rickman, will be something terrific.”

“Not a bit of it.  The next century, if I’m not mistaken, will see a pretty big flare up of a revolution; and the soul will come out on top.  Robespierre and Martin Luther won’t be in it, Jewdwine, with the poets of that school.”

“I’m glad you feel able to take that view of it.  I don’t seem to see the poets of the twentieth century myself.”

“I see them all right,” said Rickman, simply.  “They won’t be the poets of Nature, like the nineteenth century chaps; they’ll be the poets of human nature—­dramatic poets, to a man.  Of course, it’ll take a revolution to produce that sort.”

“A revolution?  A cataclysm, you mean.”

“No.  If you come to think of it, it’s only the natural way a healthy poet grows.  Look at Shakespeare.  I believe, you know, that most poets would grow into dramatic poets if they lived long enough.  Only sometimes they don’t live; and sometimes they don’t grow.  Lyric poets are cases of arrested development, that’s all.”

Jewdwine listened with considerable amusement as his subordinate propounded to him this novel view.  He wondered what literary enormity Rickman might be contemplating now.  That he had something at the back of his mind was pretty evident.  Jewdwine meant to lie low till, from that obscure region, Rickman, as was his wont, should have brought out his monster for inspection.

He produced it the next instant, blushingly, tenderly, yet with no diminution of his sublime belief.

“You see—­you’ll think it sheer lunacy, but—­I’ve a sort of idea that if I’m to go on at all, myself, it must be on those lines.  Modern poetic drama—­It’s that or nothing, you know.”

Jewdwine’s face said very plainly that he had no doubt whatever of the alternative.  It also expressed a curious and indefinable relief.

“Modern poetic drama?  So that’s your modest ambition, is it?”

Rickman owned that indeed it was.