Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/184

158 MR. GRANVILLE BARKER AND AN ALIBI is briefed by them to transmit their experiences — instead of Mr. Barker's characters being his " medium," he in a special sense is theirs. He sets them free, in his mimic, magic world, whence all accidentals have been banished, where they can move and change and respond without any interference, and lets them evolve there as they will, trusting the spark of vitality with which, as creator, he has endowed them to guide them in accordance with the final laws of life ; and so they actually move on into the future, explore the parting paths — scouts sent in advance of the rest of us, clair- voyant pioneers (more wonderful than any spirits raised by incantation), from whose bearing and messages we can measure in due time the safety and direction of the road. . . . What those messages would be Mr. Granville Barker had no guess when he devised Philip Madras, breathed life into his bones, and endowed him with this astounding gift of independence. Twenty years younger than Wells or Shaw, devoid as yet of any dogmas, much more anxious to learn than to teach, he launched his puppet into the unknown much as one might loose a kite to discover what influences were at work in the enviable upper air. Unlike Trafford, unlike Tanner, Philip Madras is not predestined ; he changes with the scenes, his opinions develop with the play. It is indeed true that he proposes to stand for the L.C.C. — but that dubious ambition is only the result of his desire to learn, not to teach : he, too, is a pierrot on pilgrimage, searching for the truth ; his character is formed after the curtain goes up, not before. We watch the make-up being affixed. And the result of this is not only a beautiful loyalty to life, an exquisitely natural unfurling and effoliation of character and motive, undeflected by any arbitrary concept or merely intellectual creed ; there is also a deliciously fluent pose, balance, grace of construction and design, impossible save under such unfettered and