“My dear fellow, modern poetic drama is a contradiction in all its terms.  There are only three schools of poetry possible—­the classic, the romantic and the natural.  Art only exists by one of three principles, normal beauty, spiritual spontaneity, and vital mystery or charm.  And none of these three is to be found in modern life.”  These were the laws he had laid down in the Prolegomena to AEsthetics, which Rickman, in the insolence of his genius, had defied.  Somehow the life seemed to have departed from those stately propositions, but Jewdwine clung to them in a desperate effort to preserve his critical integrity.  He was soothed by the sound of his own voice repeating them.  He caught as it were an echo of the majestic harmonies that once floated through his lecture-room at Lazarus.  “Besides,” he went on, “where will you find your drama to begin with?”

“In modern men and women.”

“But modern men and women are essentially undramatic, and unpoetic.”

“Still, I must take them, because, you see, there’s nothing else to take.  There never was or will be.  The men and women of Shakespeare’s time were modern to him, you know.  If they seem poetic to us, that’s because a poet made them so; and he made them so because he saw that—­essentially—­they were so.”

Jewdwine pushed out his lips in the manner of one unwillingly dubious.

“My dear Rickman, you have got to learn your limitations; or if not your limitations, the limitations made for you by the ridiculous and unlovely conditions of modern life.”

“I have learnt them.  After all, what am I to do?  I am modern—­modern as my hat,” said Rickman, turning it in his hands.  “I admit that my hat isn’t even a fugitive form of the eternal and absolute beauty.  It is, I’m afraid, horribly like everybody else’s hat.  In moments of profound insight I feel that I am horribly like everybody else.  If it wasn’t for that I should have no hope of achieving my modest ambition.”

“I’m not saying anything against your modesty or your ambition.  I’m not defying you to write a modern blank verse play; but I defy anybody to act one.”

“I know,” said Rickman, “it’s sad of course, but to the frivolous mind of a critic there always will be something ridiculous in the notion of blank verse spouted on the stage by a person in a frock-coat and a top-hat.  But do you think you’d see that frock-coat and top-hat if once the great tragic passions got inside them?”

“Where are the great tragic passions?”

“They exist and are poetic.”

“As survivals only.  They are poetic but not modern.  We have the passions of the divorce-court and the Stock Exchange.  They are modern, if you like, but not strikingly poetic.”

“Well—­even a stock-broker—­if you insist on stockbrokers—­”

“I don’t.  Take the people—­take the women I know, the women you know.  Is there—­honestly, is there any poetry in them?”