THE NEED OF NOVELTY.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13679, 12 March 1910, Page 7

THE NEED OF NOVELTY.

It would be beside the question to argue that what is good in Shaw is as good as it always was; that from what is worthless we could have had no profit ten years ago. The charm of life is in its accidents, not in its utilities; it is ;*in the blush of the maiden and tne bloom on. the peach. The peach may bo wholesome stewed, the maiden maybe far more truly desirable as a workaday | wife with a clever hand at a curry; j yet our kissing goes still by favour, and [ "not by merit 7 and ought to go. Ini stinct knows best. i Instinct is ever en the side of no\elty, loving of all seasons spring. The first fine careful rapture of a new bock or a n-»w play is never to be recaptured from second editions or hundredth performances. Our gingerbread is just as good with the gilt off; but it is not. '-First-nighters" declare it, following a fashion intelligently founded. Explorers witness it, with their -We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea."

Every altar to an unknown __od is ieally raised to a new god, the god ot n. veitv. ... These countries are still in the suburbs of oi-nlis-ttiou. and for tbe present we have to take theatrical "firstnights" as hiiiidr*xl-ar.d-nrst mguts from London or New York. They come to us, at the best of times, with a fearful baggage of old clothes. But to wait a "dozen years for them '. —it is wearing t'le inentil cast-offs of the last generation.