The first version of Mr. Masefield's "Pompey the Great" was published before "The Everlasting Mercy" and "The Widow of the Bye Street," those virile narratives that made us wake to find him famous. "Pompey" is vigorous and dramatic, yet it lacks the note that announces a new poet. The earlier poems, "Salt Water Ballads" are good, but do not rise above the chorus of minor lyrists. The short stories in "A Mainsail Haul" do not distinguish Masefield from a score of sturdy spinners of sea yarns. It was "The Widow in the Bye Street" that told us that a great new ship was in port. After that splendid arrival came "The Daffodil Fields" and "Dauber." Meanwhile the man who had found, if not created, a form of poetry so individual as to invite the final tribute of parody, showed himself in "The Tragedy of Nan," master of dramatic realism. It is likely and logical, even if the dates do not fall into line, that "Pompey" is the work of a young ambitious literary man who in the hour of conceiving the work had not yet discovered his course. He had to a large extent discovered his style and his attitude toward life and the speech of men. He makes the Romans talk in a sharp bold staccato, which is good English and excellent Masefield; as for its Latinity, well, the Romans are dead and we do not know just how they talked. Pompey says: "We were happy there, that year." Cornelia answers: "Very happy. And that day the doves came, picking the spilled grain. And at night there was a moon." Pompey's next speech is: "All the quiet valley. And the owls were calling. Those little grey owls. Make eight bells, captain." It is a question whether a modern dramatist is not misdirecting his genius when he makes plays of Greek or Roman legends and characters. To be sure, a man of genius is not to be limited in his subjects or his style. He is free by virtue of his genius. He may make an Iliad if it pleases him to try it. Mr. Bernard Shaw put a new wrinkle in the stiffened parchment of Caesar's biography. Ibsen at the age of 43, after he had hit upon his "later" manner, that is after he had made the simple discovery that universal tragedy grins in the small houses of small people in small Norwegian towns, produced his "Julian the Apostate." Poets of all nations during the last three hundred years have retold Greek and Roman stories and made new poetry of them. But on the whole the Greeks and Romans handled their own subjects, their own lives and legends fairly well. The task of the modern is to render our times or to interpret timeless and spaceless subjects from our point of view. The widow who lived in the bye street and the painter who was killed at sea are not as important persons as the Hon. Cneius Pompeius Magnus, but Mr. Masefield's poems about living (or recently killed) obscure folk are more important than his drama about the ancient illustrious dead.