In “The Thunderbolt” the simple theme is drawn out with quiet but subtle skill. An elder brother dies, rich and with one child only, a natural daughter. The family, upon whom nature has showered neither excellence nor wealth, assembles with all the gloom and all the curiosity appropriate to the occasion. It appears that there is no will forthcoming; the daughter therefore will have no share in the estate, the brothers and a sister being entitled between them. But when all is thought to be settled and safe, when each has devised a new scheme and scale of life, a brother breaks in upon the smug conclave announcing that there was a will, but that he had destroyed it. His story breaks down, and the act is traced to his wife who nursed the deceased on his death-bed, accidentally found the will, and after his death deliberately destroyed it. The poor daughter finds that her father has not forgotten her; the selfish family is thunderstruck. Such is the character, and hence the name, of the play. In Sir Arthur Pinero’s drama no lawsuit follows, all parties agreeing in a compromise. But in real life probate actions are a rich source of intimate dramas and revelations. From them innumerable details emerge: threats and cajolery, rights and wrongs, loves and hates, stand out with all their tender or terrible insistence. In fiction inevitably they find a place. In “Mr. Meeson’s Will” Sir Henry Rider Haggard has discovered an extraordinary theme, but he has not shown the art which made the ordinary theme of “The Thunderbolt” a subtle and telling play. Mr. Meeson is outraged by his nephew’s plain-speaking, which reminds him of his unrighteous dealings, and in a rage cuts him out of his will. The girl on whose behalf the nephew was to be disinherited is, by a strange course of events, thrown with Mr. Meeson on a deserted island, with two sailors and a child only besides. In terror of death, which swiftly overtakes him, Mr. Meeson would revive his former will, but there is nothing with or upon which to write it. The only possible method is to tattoo the dying man’s desires upon human flesh, and this is done by one of the sailors upon the back of the tortured girl. She is rescued by a passing ship; and on returning home a probate action, such as never yet had been, was fought out to a triumphant conclusion.