An Autumn Reverie 139 



How the gloom grows and deepens over the ' Bride of 

 Lammermoor ! ' What a light sparkles through every 

 scene of ' The Tempest ' or ' As you Like it ' ! But 

 Nature is a shamelessly inconsistent playwright ; or the 

 finger of fate is hard to discern. There were two lovers 

 whose marriage I felt sure had already been made in 

 Heaven, and in whom one beheld the Baucis and Phile- 

 mon of a long comedy. They blew hot and cold, loved 

 and hated one another, fell out and became reconciled, 

 were jealous and trustful, laughingly mocked and 

 scolded without bitterness ; in a word, played the old 

 game as it has been played since the days of Adam. 

 What a pother when, before more than the prologue 

 was spoken, my comedy was ruined by a railway acci- 

 dent in which the hero was killed, and I had to think 

 out the obscure indications which showed that from 

 the beginning a tragedy was inevitable. There was my 

 modern St. Francis too, how pure and aspiring he was, 

 how sure I felt of the effects of his love and eloquence ! 

 Yet he married a rich widow, and going into Parliament 

 changed a well-imagined epic into burlesque. Ample 

 atonement for mistake is offered by the delight of re- 

 constructing the play. 



Nevertheless there are times when for a space 

 this ingenious puzzle and all its kindred amusements 

 pall, and the mind, losing the activity that is essential 

 to the full enjoyment of idleness, becomes torpid and 

 irritable. Fled is all the poetry and the fun. The 

 silly neighbour chases his soap-bubble as before, but 



