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Deep in their quest of that borderland beauty which is common to life and art French painters are once again deeply concerned with life: to borrow an idea from my next essay, they have chosen a new artistic problem. To them, however, "life" does not mean what it means to the sentimentalists or melodramatists, nor even precisely what it meant to the Impressionists.
Incident follows breathlessly upon incident. No melodramatist ever poured out incident upon the stage from such a horn of plenty. His people are energetic and untamed, like cowboys or runaway horses. They might be described as runaway human beings. And Dostoevsky knows how to crowd his stage as only the inveterate melodramatists know.
It is a perpetual sermon to those that would thresh around to no avail, be they orators, melodramatists, or makers of photoplays with an alleged heart-interest. Let us consider Gilbert Stuart's portrait of Washington. This painter's notion of personal dignity has far more of the intellectual quality than Van Dyck.
It seemed leisurely certain, however, of catching us before nightfall; and, sure enough, as the light began to thicken, and we stood admiring its mountainous magnificence vast billows of plum-coloured gloom, hanging like doomsday over a stretch of haunted orchard the great drops began to patter down. Surely the sky is the greatest of all melodramatists.
In addition to its manufacturing importance, an importance which has survived and increased in the face of the changes in the silk trade and watch trade, commenced by Huskisson, and completed by Peel, Coventry affords rich food for the antiquarian, scenes of deep interest to the historical student, a legend for poets, a pageant for melodramatists, and a tableau for amateurs of poses plastiques.
Sometimes the last act was only finished on Saturday morning, which, however, would not prevent the piece being played on Sunday evening." In a number of the Revue des deux Mondes for 1857 we found Saredo mentioned among the melodramatists of Italy.
The serious playwright will do well to leave it to the melodramatists. A third theme to be handled with the greatest caution, if at all, is that of heroic self-sacrifice. Not that self-sacrifice, like revenge, is an outworn passion.
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