"THE sources of literary ambition are proverbially obscure, and it is scarcely worth while to enquire why the Laureate, who has spent a lifetime in filling the world with his verse, should, at the eleventh hour, have conceived the idea of emptying the Globe with his prose. If there could be any doubt that he had not only done so, but also had set himself to the business with a right good will, the hearty and sympathetic jeers of the not unkindly audience that attended the first performance of his _Promise_ the other evening must have settled the matter. Indeed, some of the Poet's own lines--or something like them--seemed to occur to everybody. Even his staunchest admirers could be heard in the lobbies between the acts respectfully quoting to each other-- 'I hold it truth that he who flings His harp aside, to try the bones, Will somehow find that paving stones, Are levelled at his neatest things.' By the way, the management might even now take a hint from a rival establishment, and try this on a poster. "The plot of the piece is simplicity itself, and if the talented author had merely contented himself with working out his pretty little idyl in some ordinary and unpretentious fashion, there could hardly have been any doubt about the result. But he went further than this, and in some inspired moment appears to have conceived the brilliant and happy idea of spicing his whole story, from beginning to end, with the wildest and most boisterous fun. "Not that his purpose was distinctly apparent on the first go off of his piece in a Lincolnshire farm; for the serious utterances of several gloomy rustics for a few moments filled the house almost with awe. "However, with so much genuine pantomime go for the finish in reserve, very possibly the author knew what he was about. And he was not at fault. He must have realised what depths of quiet fun would be stirred when placing Mrs. BERNARD-BEERE over the dead body of _Eva_, he made her, in so many words, courteously request _Farmer Dobson_ and the comic agnostic _Edgar_ to consider themselves quite at home, and not mind the corpse, as she had a few general remarks to make that wouldn't take her much more than five-and-twenty minutes. "But there,--the matter really defies sober criticism, and, taking his own charming lines from the bill, the story is soon told:-- 'The Town booked well for the opening night, The Pit was full, an evident pull, The Grand Old Man had a box of his own, And VEZIN behind said it looked all right, And the critics in front took an excellent tone. There's a chance for _The Promise of May, of May_, There's a chance for _The Promise of May_.