It is interesting to trace the influences in Moody's work. He was very thoroughly a man of books, and some critics complain that there is more ink than blood in the veins of the people of whom he writes. Certainly it is possible to find traces of his reading on nearly every page that he wrote. The lovely fourth stanza of "Gloucester Moors" is Coleridge; "Faded Pictures" is Browning at his worst; and "The Daguerreotype" is a deliberate effort to imitate the irregular ode-form of Coventry Patmore. And of course "Heart's-Wildflower" and "A Dialogue in Purgatory," like the lyrics in "The Masque of Judgment," are a Chicago version of Rossetti. In his prose plays we find Moody writing with an energy which he seldom exhibited in his poetry. Not in Jerome K. Jerome's "The Passing of the Third Floor Back," nor in Charles Rann Kennedy's "The Servant in the House," is the idea of the beneficent effect of a powerful and virtuous nature more plausibly presented than in "The Faith Healer." And Moody obtained his effect more honestly than did Jerome and Kennedy; his faith-healer is merely a faith-healer to the end of the play, there is no suggestion that he is more than human. In many respects "The Faith Healer" is Moody's most important work. There is more poetry in its prose than in all his poetic dramas put together. When Michaelis makes love to Rhoda and tells the story of his childhood home, when Beeler describes the picture of Pan and the Pilgrim, and when Uncle Abe chants his prophecies and visions, then there is real poetry--poetry not unlike some of the best passages in Synge's plays. The "strange mounting sing-song" of Uncle Abe's speech evidently was the inspiration of the best parts of Mr. Ridgley Torrence's "The Rider of Dreams." "The Great Divide" has been magnificently acted, but it _is_ inferior in every respect to "The Faith Healer." Its theme--the contrast between the Puritan spirit which Moody considered typical of the Eastern States, and the generous paganism which he thought characteristically Western,--might be, and probably will be, the basis of an important play. But there never was a New Englander remotely resembling Ruth Jordan, there never was a Westerner remotely resembling Stephen Ghent. Hero and heroine, or villain and villainess, or whatever they are supposed to be, have actuality, it is true--the actuality of figures seen in a nightmare. And the other characters in the play have no actuality whatsoever. And the author's total lack of humor never injured his work more than in this play. It is painful to see situations essentially humorous made banal and dull by the author's obtuseness. If only the idea had occurred to Bernard Shaw instead of to William Vaughn Moody!