Of Mr Swinnerton, who also stands outside his canvas, one is not so sure. He made, in _The Casement_, an elusive picture of the life of the well-to-do when confronted with the realities of life, but did not succeed emphatically enough in the more ponderous effort entitled _The Happy Family_. There he was too uniform, too mechanical, and rather too much bound by literary traditions. He was so bound also in his brilliant _Nocturne_, the tragedy of five creatures within a single night. But Mr Swinnerton has a point of view, an attitude toward life; I could not define it, but am conscious of its existence, and in a man of promise that is quite enough. For a man with an individual attitude will make it felt if he has the weapons of style with which to express it. Now Mr Swinnerton shows great dexterity in the use of words, felicity of phrase, a discrimination in the choice of details which will enable him to embody such ideas as he may later on conceive. He has only to fear that he may be mistaken as to the size of his ideas; like Mr Hugh de Selincourt, he may be too much inclined to take as the plot of a novel an idea and a story in themselves too slender. Under modern publishing conditions he may be compelled to spin out his work: as his tendency is to concentrate, he may find himself so much hampered as to lose the chief charm of his writing, viz., balance. He has shown charm in _Nocturne_, some power in _The Happy Family_; these two qualities need blending, so that Mr Swinnerton be no longer two men, but one.