_Divorce_ was the inevitable product
of the time. It had been written by Mr. Price, but it might have been
written by a dozen other young men--granting intelligence, youth, leisure,
a university education, and three or four years of London life--any one of
a dozen clever young men who frequent West End drawing-rooms and dabble in
literature might have written it. All that could be said was that the play
was, or rather had been, _dans le mouvement_; and original work never is
_dans le mouvement_. _Divorce_ was nothing more than the product of certain
surroundings, and remembering Mr. Price's other plays, there seemed to be
no reason to believe that he would do better. Mr. Price had tried his hand
at criticism, and that was a sure sign that the creative faculty had begun
to wither. His critical essays were not rich nor abundant in thought, they
were not the skirmishing of a man fighting for his ideas, they were not
preliminary to a great battle; they were at once vague and pedantic,
somewhat futile, _les ?bats d'un esprit en peine_, and seemed to announce
a talent in progress of disintegration rather than of reconstruction.
'Sometimes the critic's phrases seemed wet with tears; sometimes,
abandoning his tone of commiseration, he would assume one of scientific
indifference.
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