ire, and therefore, perhaps, have never produced a real Aristophanes; the "merum sal" of a Horace is more to our taste. It so happens that we once heard one of the most polished of English Horaces propound and answer the problem concerning the Greek comic poet: "I don't suppose anyone could really translate Aristophanes. Well, Gilbert might." Again, with our own ears we have heard a university lecture on Aristophanes illustrated by the recitation of a chorus from "The Sorcerer":

She will tend him, nurse him, mend him,

Air his linen, dry his tears.

Yet neither of these scholars meant that Gilbert was the complete Aristophanes de nos jours, for he was a satirist only in our modern etiolated sense, and not a poet even to our native ears. On the other hand, he did most assuredly possess that true ear for lyrical values, and that triumphant audacity in fitting sense (or nonsense) to sound, in making admonishment fit the rhyme, which is pure, sincere Aristophanes. As often as not the thought expressed is quite homely, the phrasing absolutely straightforward, the words colloquial; yet to the hearer's delight and surprise the whole thing falls into verse with an appearance of spontaneity-the art that conceals art.

The

more banal the expression-"such an opportunity will not occur again"-the more it tickles the ear when it is first revealed to us in rhythm. Sometimes the effect is produced by a bold innovation in rhyme, as in the moral lyrics recited by the Fleshly Poet in "Patience," especially the second with its climax:

The consequence was he was lost totally,

And married a girl in the corps de bally.

This Aristophanic achievement, however, was but slowly developed by Gil

bert, who had to find his public through devious ways. Most of the playssome thirty at least-with which he began his dramaturgist's career are forgotten; they belong to an era in which playgoers spoke of Miss Madge Robertson and Miss Marie Wilton, whom we have long known as Mrs. Kendal and Lady Bancroft. Оссаsionally, as in "The Palace of Truth," which the Mermaid Society revived some years ago, there are gleams of the Aristophanic art; but all their merits have not saved these early plays of his from being to-day as dead as the Gaiety burlesque-as dead, alas! as the "German Reed" entertainment. Amongst amateurs, "Pygmalion and Galatea" and "Engaged" survive. But if the British stage, in the 'seventies of last century, offered Gilbert but occasional opportunities for the display of his lyrical powers, he found another medium of reaching the public. "Bab Ballads" exhibit the lyrist at his best; and a "Bab Ballad" is to-day as much a thing sui generis as is an "Ingoldsby Legend." In reading them we may easily become critical enough to find a certain sameness; but that is only another way of saying that Gilbert gave us too much of a good thing. They were written, we believe, as journalism, and they betray, despite a remarkable invention and volatility, an occasional monotony of elaboration. A ballad is a narrative in verse, and this was not the ideal form for Gilbert.

The

"Gilbertian," which to the journalist usually means nothing more than topsy-turvy, is a tribute to the librettist alone: but when Stevenson put into the mouth of one of his characters-Captain Nares, if we remember rightly-the phrase "Playing Gilbert-and-Sullivan on the high seas," he was certainly thinking of the particular blend of fantasy and inversion of reality, of grave absurdities of diction wedded to absurd gravities of music, which is characteristic of "Savoy opera." For this mixture the world was certainly ready-hysterically SO in America, where half-a-dozen New York theatres simultaneously performed "H.M.S. Pinafore"-and by this time Gilbert was primed with all the resources, dramatic and literary, necessary to meet the demand. He produced with Sullivan a round dozen of full-sized comic operas and the immortal fragment, "Trial by Jury"; two or three other libretti written for other composers have the same inimitable characteristics, and seem only to have failed owing to the lack of Sullivan.

The problems of construction which a comic librettist has to face are never easily solved, and the standard which Gilbert set himself was a high one. He had no distinct mission except the negative one of avoiding the improprieties traditionally associated with burlesque and farce; he had no objection to satirizing conventional follies, but first and last he was out to entertain the public. The stories he had to tell were purely romantic, but he loved to make the clash between romance and everyday life, between the idyllic and the commonplace; stalwart, beefy soldiers enamored of languishing "esthetic" maidens, or a procession of robed peers through an Arcadian landscape. Considering the difficulties of such a form of drama, one must admit that Gilbert steered his way through a maze of technique-much of it, we repeat, self

remarkable success.

imposed-with The plot can hardly be very elaborate, good "curtains" and tableaux are essential; the hero must be tenor, the heroine soprano; the twists of the plot must admit of the necessary combinations of voices for duets, trios, or quartettes; and, above all, the chorus must not be dragged in without dramatic reason. The very smoothness of the result blinds the spectator to the underlying difficulties. No doubt at times Gilbert trusted, with complete justification, to the skill and the scoring of his collaborator; at other times it must have piqued so polished a librettist to hear his own lyrics cunningly transformed by their music into new and independent triumphs-the famous "Captain Shaw" song is an instance in point. None the less it is probably true to say that where Gilbert is most truly Aristophanic Sullivan merely followed him, and lived in his twinkling satirical eye. Consider the unctuous rectitude of the air to:

Oh, is there not one maiden breast Which does not feel the moral beauty

Of making worldly interest

Subordinate to sense of duty?

Even in the conventions of the stage itself Gilbert found opportunity for satirical treatment, often childishly naïve; a chorus stealthily pursuing its victim sings "With catlike tread upon our prey we steal" fortissimo. In one remarkable instance he makes his crowd of bystanders adopt and adapt the function of the Greek chorus, with a delightful effect of burlesque; it being necessary to deceive the Mikado, in three verses three conspirators sing every one a thumping lie, and every time the chorus assures the emperor that the liar, however much handicapped by natural propensities, is in this case telling the truth. The whole song, with its "corroborative detail,"

would have pleased Aristophanes to the heart.

One of two characteristics, Gilbertian and not Aristophanic, may be noted; the germs can be found in the "Bab Ballads." There is the logical prosecution of a syllogism from quaint premises to an absurd conclusion: a father says to his son "I am going to marry again," and the son replies that, though he is surprised, "still it can hardly be necessary to assure you that any wife of yours is a mother of mine." This is cognate with the habit his characters display of meeting poetical fever with a cooling draught of the polite commonplace: the lover says to his lady that she is the "sunlight of his life," to which she replies, "You are, The Saturday Review.

of course, at liberty to profit by any light I may happen to emit." Another trick Gilbert wore threadbare by repetition-the trick of making his characters treat their personal qualities with absolute frankness:

Patience: Oh, if you were but a thought less beautiful than you are! Grosvenor: Would that I were; but candor compels me to admit that I'm not.

And lastly, when one considers the kind of play current in his youth and the kind of musical drama which he saw displace his work, one can be grateful that he could say, with Jack Point, "My jests are most carefully selected, and anything objectionable is expunged."

11.30 G.N.R.—