days of Betterton, on the fortunes of this or that French original when it was produced in Paris. Even in dealing with new plays they love to discover analogies with forgotten efforts of unremembered playwrights. Of such work one can only say that though often interesting and delightful, it is not criticism. The analytic method has this disadvantage, that it tends to become dry and technical, to address itself to authors and actors rather than to the great public. Conscious of this tendency, the critic should strive against it, repress what is pedagogic in his style, and remember with Hazlitt that the insipid must at all events be avoided as that which the public abhors most.'

If I may hint at what seems to me a fault in English criticism, I should say that too much space is given up to phrases, more or less conventional, with regard to the actors while the merits of the play are often superficially considered. This habit has survived from the time when English plays were merely contemptible, while some of the greatest actors the world has ever seen afforded material for detailed criticism, neither conventional nor stereotyped; from the time when Leigh Hunt dismissed 'Reynolds, Dibdin, and Cherry' as beneath the notice of a rational man, and devoted his whole attention to John Philip Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Jordan, Elliston, and their great contemporaries. Now the times have changed. The merit of our plays and of our acting is more nearly on a level; and this being so, it seems to me that criticism of acting, in which individual whim and fancy, sympathy and antipathy, necessarily play a large part, is at once less fruitful and less interesting than criticism of plays. This impression may be due to my own keener interest in authorship than in acting, but it seems to be shared by the leading French critics, who, even in dealing with the Comédie Française, make their comments on the actors very short indeed. I do not argue that acting should be by any means neglected, but merely that the critic need not hold it his duty to assign particular praise or blame to each individual member of a large cast. Sometimes the acting demands careful consideration, since the play must be seen, so to speak, through its performance, and the merits and defects inherent in the one separated from the merits and defects proper to the other; but as a general rule the play, which is, or ought to be, a piece of English literature, is of greater importance than the acting, however meritorious.

A recent article by the Earl of Lytton in this Review has revived an old discussion as to the merits and defects of the system of firstnight criticism. Its defects, indeed, are patent enough. That an artist who has devoted months, perhaps years, to the study of a great Shakespearean part should have to stand or fall by the impressions received by the critics on one nervous evening, and that the most influential of these critics should have to formulate their impressions

at lightning speed, with no time for reflection, and with nerves either jaded or over-stimulated, is clearly not an ideal condition of things. The merits of the system, on the other hand, are not positive merits but mere excuses, resolving themselves into the assertion that, for the present at any rate, no other plan is practicable. This is quite true. The public demands immediate news of an important theatrical production just as of a debate in Parliament or a dynamite explosion. Even if this were not so, the idea which has sometimes been mooted of establishing a critics' night' (the third or fourth performance) would in nowise mend matters, as it would merely expose actors to two nervous ordeals instead of one. The remedy which has sometimes been attempted, of inviting the critics to an elaborate dress rehearsal before the public first night is open to grave objection and is in most cases scarcely practicable.

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The true remedy lies in inducing the critics and the public to accept and make allowance for the fact that the midnight column must often be provisional, perfunctory, inconclusive. Many slight productions, and even some more or less pretentious performances, can be analysed and disposed of in an hour as well as in a month; but others demand even from the readiest and rapidest critic a more attentive and leisurely study than the conditions. of daily journalism permit. It has sometimes occurred to me that this difficulty might be got over if the critic were suffered to separate the two halves of his duty,-reporting, that is to say, and criticism properly so called. On the night of the production he might play the reporter, indicating the plot of a new play, describing the scenic and spectacular sensations of a melodrama or Shakespearean revival, stating how the piece and the performers were received by the public, and, in short, treating the production as an item of mere news. This done, he might leave his criticism proper to a weekly feuilleton written with all due deliberation, after a second visit (if necessary) to the theatre, which the readers of the paper would learn to look for on some stated day. The body of newspaper readers to whom the merits of a play or actor are matters of very considerable consequence is already large and is daily increasing. Out of consideration for them, as well as in justice to managers, authors, and actors, it might be well to make some attempt to soften the crudities of first-night criticism.

It is said that an age of great art is never an age of great criticism; but this could only hold good while the world was young. Once for all, society has become self-conscious, and henceforward the rule must be, the greater the art the greater the criticism. To mention great art and the modern English drama in one breath may seem a quaint and incongruous juxtaposition; yet we must have a certain amount of faith in the future of the stage, else why waste time in considering the conditions of theatrical criticism? The

drama is not dead but liveth, and contains the germs of better things. It lies with criticism to foster these germs, and, in the very effort, to develop its own better possibilities. When the drama takes its place once more among the highest forms in which English thought can utter itself, the criticism of a literary stage will itself become literature.

WILLIAM ARCHER.

ABOLITION OF

PROPRIETARY MADHOUSES.

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THE report of the last Select Committee on Lunacy Law, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed March 28, 1878, concludes with the expression of the opinion that such changes as the Committee have indicated would increase public confidence in a system which is not unnaturally, and perhaps not undesirably, regarded with a considerable amount of jealousy and distrust.'

None of such changes as the Committee indicated in their report have, however, been carried into effect, and the suspicion and distrust of the public in the lunacy laws have meanwhile continued to exist, and it may safely be asserted have continued to increase.

And this suspicion and distrust are not vague and general and applicable to all sorts and conditions of lunatics, but have regard almost entirely to those who are detained in those institutions which are technically called licensed houses, or in common parlance private lunatic asylums. The highest authority on the whole subject, the Earl of Shaftesbury, the venerable chairman of the Commissioners in Lunacy, fully and freely made known his opinions, the result of his vast experience, before the Select Committees of 1859 and 1877. Respecting lunacy legislation in general he said before these Committees

A large proportion of the difficulties of legislation, and almost all the complications we have to contend with or to obviate, arise from the principle on which the licensed houses are formed (1859, Q. 494).

Half of the provisions of the Acts of Parliament are made to enable the Commissioners to fight against the selfishness of persons who open these asylums (Q. 504).

There is no doubt whatever that, if the public have any suspicion of ill-practice, it is in connection with the licensed houses?—Yes (1877, Q. 11612).

That this opinion is perfectly correct, is known to every one who mixes freely with all classes of men, for one by no chance ever hears the public institutions for the insane spoken of by members of the general public in terms of suspicion or dislike. It is the old madhouse, the modern private asylum or licensed house, in which it is known that helpless people are imprisoned for the profit of the private owner,

which alone excites suspicion and dislike. No doubt it is to some extent a traditional sentiment of antipathy handed down from times when facts were fully proved against these institutions which would now seem almost incredible-such facts, for instance, as came out in evidence, that at the private asylum called the White House in Bethnal Green, every Saturday night from 200 to 220 patients were chained down naked in loose straw in their cribs, and never visited again until Monday morning.

At that time, fifty-six years ago, the inmates of most asylums were treated with harshness and neglect, for county asylums did not exist as a field for experiment in the direction of humane innovation. But subsequently in these institutions and in the public hospitals for the insane great ameliorations of treatment were effected, the greatest of which was what is called the non-restraint system. I do not know that any important improvement in the treatment of the insane or any abolition of any old abuse has ever been initiated in a private asylum, although those changes from harshness and neglect to more humane and skilful methods, which have from time to time been first carried into effect in public institutions, have been, though ofttimes with great reluctance and delay, more or less adopted by the proprietors of private asylums. Certainly the revolting brutality and neglect of former times have, under the influence of a better example, ceased to be practised, although it must be also said that from time to time the survival of some of the old brutality is unexpectedly discovered. For instance, the Commissioners reported in 1883 that, in consequence of complaints, they discovered that it was a common practice of the attendants in the largest private asylum in England to twist the arms of violent patients and to give them blow for blow.

But the suspicion and distrust of private asylums is not now founded upon the belief that their inmates are treated with cruel violence. It may perhaps even be said that it is founded entirely upon the belief that persons are admitted into them who ought not to be admitted; that they are not treated with a view to promote their recovery; and that they are detained long after they ought to be set at liberty, or at least removed to places where they could enjoy greater freedom. But if these are facts, they cannot so easily be proved as overt acts of violence or of neglect, and the private asylums were included in the general whitewash of the last Select Committee, which declared with regard to the existing system of the lunacy law that, 'assuming the strongest cases against the present system were brought before them, allegations of mala fides or of serious abuses were not substantiated.'

Notwithstanding, however, the inclusion of private asylums in this general verdict, the Select Committee recommended that they should be superseded by the extension of the system of public