So the children ran back to the entry, and sat down to their story,

taking pains to read carefully, as if their object was to learn to read;
and though they did not expect it, they did, in fact, have a very
pleasant time
So the children ran back to the entry, and sat down to their story,
taking pains to read carefully, as if their object was to learn to read;
and though they did not expect it, they did, in fact, have a very
pleasant time.

Have we not here, then, the distinction between character-drawing and

psychology? Character-drawing is the presentment of human nature in its
commonly-recognized, understood, and accepted aspects; psychology is, as
it were, the exploration of character, the bringing of hitherto
unsurveyed tracts within the circle of our knowledge and comprehension
Have we not here, then, the distinction between character-drawing and
psychology? Character-drawing is the presentment of human nature in its
commonly-recognized, understood, and accepted aspects; psychology is, as
it were, the exploration of character, the bringing of hitherto
unsurveyed tracts within the circle of our knowledge and comprehension.
In other words, character-drawing is synthetic, psychology analytic.
This does not mean that the one is necessarily inferior to the other.
Some of the greatest masterpieces of creative art have been achieved by
the synthesis of known elements. Falstaff, for example--there is no more
brilliant or more living character in all fiction; yet it is impossible
to say that Shakespeare has here taken us into previously unplumbed
depths of human nature, as he has in Hamlet, or in Lear. No doubt it is
often very hard to decide whether a given personage is a mere projection
of the known or a divination of the unknown. What are we to say, for
example, of Cleopatra, or of Shylock, or of Macbeth? Richard II, on the
other hand, is as clearly a piece of psychology as the Nurse in _Romeo
and Juliet_ is a piece of character-drawing. The comedy of types
necessarily tends to keep within the limits of the known, and
Moliere--in spite of Alceste and Don Juan--is characteristically a
character-drawer, as Racine is characteristically a psychologist. Ibsen
is a psychologist or he is nothing. Earl Skule and Bishop Nicholas,
Hedda Gabler and John Gabriel Borkman are daring explorations of
hitherto uncharted regions of the human soul. But Ibsen, too, was a
character-drawer when it suited him. One is tempted to say that there is
no psychology in Brand--he is a mere incarnation of intransigent
idealism--while Peer Gynt is as brilliant a psychological inspiration as
Don Quixote. Dr. Stockmann is a vigorously-projected character, Hialmar
Ekdal a piece of searching psychology. Finally, my point could scarcely
be better illustrated than by a comparison--cruel but instructive
--between Rebecca in _Rosmersholm_ and the heroine in _Bella
Donna_. Each is, in effect, a murderess, though it was a moral, not a
mineral, poison that Rebecca employed. But while we know nothing
whatever of Mrs. Armine"s mental processes, Rebecca"s temptations,
struggles, sophistries, hesitations, resolves, and revulsions of feeling
are all laid bare to us, so that we feel her to be no monster, but a
living woman, comprehensible to our intelligence, and, however
blameworthy, not wholly beyond the range of our sympathies. There are
few greater achievements of psychology.

Let us turn now to a more memorable piece of work; that interesting play

of Sir Arthur Pinero"s transition period, _The Profligate_
Let us turn now to a more memorable piece of work; that interesting play
of Sir Arthur Pinero"s transition period, _The Profligate_. Here the
great situation of the third act is brought about by a chain of
coincidences which would be utterly unthinkable in the author"s maturer
work. Leslie Brudenell, the heroine, is the ward of Mr. Cheal, a
solicitor. She is to be married to Dunstan Renshaw; and, as she has no
home, the bridal party meets at Mr. Cheal"s office before proceeding to
the registrar"s. No sooner have they departed than Janet Preece, who has
been betrayed and deserted by Dunstan Renshaw (under an assumed name)
comes to the office to state her piteous case. This is not in itself a
pure coincidence; for Janet happened to come to London in the same train
with Leslie Brudenell and her brother Wilfrid; and Wilfrid, seeing in
her a damsel in distress, recommended her to lay her troubles before a
respectable solicitor, giving her Mr. Cheal"s address. So far, then, the
coincidence is not startling. It is natural enough that Renshaw"s
mistress and his betrothed should live in the same country town; and it
is not improbable that they should come to London by the same train, and
that Wilfrid Brudenell should give the bewildered and weeping young
woman a commonplace piece of advice. The concatenation of circumstances
is remarkable rather than improbable. But when, in the next act, not a
month later, Janet Preece, by pure chance, drops in at the Florentine
villa where Renshaw and Leslie are spending their honeymoon, we feel
that the long arm of coincidence is stretched to its uttermost, and that
even the thrilling situation which follows is very dearly bought. It
would not have been difficult to attenuate the coincidence. What has
actually happened is this: Janet has (we know not how) become a sort of
maid-companion to a Mrs. Stonehay, whose daughter was a school-friend of
Leslie"s; the Stonehays have come to Florence, knowing nothing of
Leslie"s presence there; and they happen to visit the villa in order to
see a fresco which it contains. If, now, we had been told that Janet"s
engagement by the Stonehays had resulted from her visit to Mr. Cheal,
and that the Stonehays had come to Florence knowing Leslie to be there,
and eager to find her, several links would have been struck off the
chain of coincidence; or, to put it more exactly, a fairly coherent
sequence of events would have been substituted for a series of
incoherent chances. The same result might no doubt have been achieved in
many other and neater ways. I merely indicate, by way of illustration, a
quite obvious method of reducing the element of coincidence in the case.