Wilde and his friend, who were both Irishmen, and had at various periods written the dramatic notices for _Vanity Fair_, represented the new school of criticism. They took neither themselves nor the dramatic art seriously. Accepting the dictum of their fellow-countryman, Sheridan, as to the purpose of the theatre and the limitations of dramatic art, their articles were irreverent, audacious, a little contemptuous. _Vanity Fair_ encouraged this attitude towards players and playhouses. And, indeed, it was the natural and inevitable result of the seriousness with which the critics of the period were beginning to take both themselves and the theatre. The proprietors of the _Daily Telegraph_ were greatly interested in theatrical affairs. Mr. Edward Lawson, now Lord Burnham, was the son-in-law of Mr. Ben Webster, of the Adelphi Theatre; and that paper led the way in devoting a considerable space to theatrical matters. “Epoch-making” became quite the appropriate phrase to employ regarding any new production which was unusually well received. Clement Scott, the critic of the _Daily Telegraph_, was an instrument ready to the hand of his employers. His standard of all dramatic work appeared to be the Robertson comedies as staged by the Bancrofts—just as in later years Mr. William Archer found nothing very good after “The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.” That forgotten comedy was Mr. Archer’s “epoch-making play.” Both Mr. Archer and Clement Scott had served an apprenticeship on the _London Figaro_, and surely no two members of a staff were ever before so unequally yoked together. Scott was impulsive, always in extremes of heat or cold, and never very particular as to the accuracy of his phrases. Archer was a “dour body,” solid in matter, turgid and dogmatic in manner, and as solemn in statement as a Presbyterian meenister. The atmosphere of seriousness by which Mr. Archer has surrounded himself when dealing with playhouses is, indeed, impenetrable, fuliginous. Perhaps, all being said and done, the proper attitude of the man retained for this sort of work is neither that of satirical sceptic and scintillating detractor, nor that of fanatical worshipper and solemn commentator. Ernest Bendall, in my time, struck, I think, the golden mean. He was never betrayed into excessive praise or excessive censure. He found nothing in the theatre to make such a demand on the emotions as should call for literary heroics. Yet his judgments were sound, and they carried weight. He was temperate in expression, had a natural facility for hitting on the right word, and he always wrote like a gentleman. Bendall may have had contemporaries who wrote more brilliantly, but none who wrote with a nicer sense of his duty to the public, and with less desire to parade his own idiosyncrasies. A more admirable selection for the office of Censor under the Lord Chamberlain could not have been made.