But all this we knew ten years ago, when _The Sin of David_ was first published; and the only new interest was the question of its adaptability to the theatre. Poetic drama seldom gains much by presentation on the stage, unless it is full of action; and there is little action in this play except of the inward kind. In almost the only case where quick movement is here demanded one becomes conscious of the intrusion of words. When he knows that the relief of Pomfret depends upon his instant action, _Lisle_ still finds time for conversations with his servant, with _Miriam_ and with the doctor, and for a couple of well-sustained soliloquies. Certain lines, again, whose literary flavour, when read, makes us overlook their inherent improbability in the mouth of the character that utters them, take on, when spoken, an air of artifice. Such are the lines in which _Miriam_ describes her old sister-in-law, to her face, as "living without sin And reputably rusting to the grave." And there is always the danger that actors will be content with a rather slurred and perfunctory recitation of lines that have no bearing on the action but are just inserted for joy as a rhetorical embroidery. It may be a trivial criticism, but I think the play suffered a little from the appearance of the love-child whose death was to be the punishment for _Lisle's_ sin in sending _Mardyke_ to his death in a forlorn hope. The instructions in my book are contradictory. The time of Act III. is described as "five years later," and we are then told that "four years are supposed to have elapsed since Act II." Anyhow, the boy should be only three or four years old. Actually he is a girl (the stage must have it so) of some ten summers. You may say that all those years during which the lovers' passion has been purified by worship of the child's innocence, and "God has not said a word," add a dramatic force to the blow when at last it falls. But for myself--a mere matter of taste--I feel that the vengeance of Heaven has been nursed too long.