"The New Woman" at the Lyceum, i.e., Mrs. Patrick Campbell as Romeo-Robertson's Juliet. Heartily can we "pat Campbell" on her delicate shoulder for her rendering of her share in the "Balcony Scene." That "The Campbells are coming" we all know; but whether this particular Campbell, "of that ilk," has yet "arrived" is the question on which we shall have more to say "in our next." Scenically, satisfactory. Dramatically, doubtful.
UGLY.
(A Pendant to a pretty little "pome" called "Pretty," by "Janet.")
An ugly little artist had an ugly little dream,
Of an ugly little world built on an ugly little scheme;
He took up his little pencil and incontinently tried
To make ugly little pictures of that world so uglified.
He drew ugly little figures just like evil little imps,
With ugly little bodies of the hue of parboiled shrimps,
With ugly little faces of a subterhuman sort,
Each a dark Gehenna phantom or unnatural Stygian "sport."
He limned ugly little mannikins as pale as tallow dips,
And ugly unsexed women with protuberant under lips,
With ugly scarlet tresses, or with sable porters'-knots,
And with noses like a satyr's, and with eyes like inky blots.
He daubed ugly little backgrounds, all as meaningless as mud,
And ugly little sunsets all suggesting fire and blood,
And ugly little arabesques which little seemed to mean,
Yet were commonly suggestive of the cruel and unclean.
Then that ugly little artist kicked up ugly little heels,
And indulged in grim grimaces, and in gruesome little squeals,
And he cried, "Hooray! On Loveliness shall man no longer feast.
I have proved that Art's true subject is not Beauty, but—the Beast!"