Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/138



Read Max on Swinburne in the Fortnightly Review'' when you get the chance and contrast it with George Moore's account of his visit to Swinburne, in which he can only tell us that he found the poet naked in bed. I forget where it occurs''

In answering this letter I pointed out that Disraeli avoided the great political issues of the days in which he was writing and that any author, such as H. G. Wells in ''The New Machiavelli, Granville Barker in Waste'' and H. M. Harwood in the ''Grain of Mustard Seed'', who attempts a political theme is almost bound to impale himself on one or other horn of a dilemma; if his novel or play revolve round a living controversy such as the right to strike in war-time or the justice of ordering reprisals in Ireland, the theatre may become the scene of a nightly riot and the critics will consider their own political preferences more earnestly than the literary merits of the book; if the action of play or novel be based on a dead or unborn controversy, it will fail to arouse the faintest interest. I was sure that the other admirers of the three works