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Momentary aberrations of fashion must not deceive us as to the general tendency of taste. Mr. Hall Caine would have us believe that the public has suddenly gone crazy for stage-plays. "Novels of great strength and originality," says the author of The Scapegoat, "occasionally appear without creating more than a flutter of interest, and, meanwhile, plays of one-tenth their power and novelty are making something like a profound impression." What plays are these? Not the Ollendorfian attitudinisings of M. Maeterlinck, surely! The fact is that two years ago it would have been impossible for any one to pen that sentence of Mr. Caine's, and it is now possible merely because a passion for the literary drama has been flogged into existence by certain able critics. With a limited class, the same class which appreciates poetry, the literary drama may find a welcome; but to suppose that it competes, or can, in this country, even pretend to compete, with the novel is a delusion, and Mr. Caine may safely abandon his locusts and wild honey.