[In the following excerpted review of The Heather Field and Maeve, the critic praises Martyn's subjects while faulting his presentation.]

A recent controversy has given a prominence to these plays [The Heather Field and Maeve] with which their own merits or demerits have nothing to do. The controversy took its rise from the Introduction Mr. George Moore unfortunately wrote for the volume, an Introduction which only dealt casually with Mr. Martyn's work, and which otherwise is a monument of preposterous criticism and bad taste.

The two plays did not need any sensational aid to win the attention that is their due. They are notable, but not for their literary quality. They are genuinely poetical, and that is always notable. They are not poetry. The poetry in them has been given utterance by a man of sentiment, who is not a master of language, save at very rare moments. But he is nearer being a poet than a clever man of letters. His ordinary style is inflexible and even a little prim. Of his stage-craft it is not my business to speak, but I think he has learnt his trade well enough to keep the attention of the few who would be attracted by his matter. Both plays move one with a sense of deep feeling stirring beneath them, of a deep love for the things of the spirit and for beauty. Such intentions as his will always win sympathy and admiration in the right direction; but they cannot by themselves make literature.

The Heather Field has a rich, a magnificent idea working in it. No one but a poet by nature could have conceived it. If only the poet had been served by the handmaid, Art. An idealist, wrenched from his books and studies, driven to practical matters, spends his life and fortune on reclaiming the wild. When he has spent his all—his money, his wife's love, his tenants' patience—then, in the midst of his extravagant hopes, the untamable, the inconquerable heather springs up again. The shadow of insanity suddenly shuts off the actual world from him, and he beholds joy and beauty once more. One is torn between admiration of the idea and disappointment for the treatment it has received—careful intelligent treatment, nevertheless, but not adequate to the motive. You try to forget Mr. Martyn's circumstance as much as possible, if you are possessed by the idea.

With Maeve it is different. The story lies half in the world of faërie and half in the world of men. It should be the more difficult to treat; but it is not so for Mr. Martyn. … [The] whole story of Maeve, the maiden betrothed to an earthly lover, dying because she is exiled from beauty, quivers through the imagination, and dwells there hauntingly. Maeve is no shadow. I would attest her reality against any of the lustier maidens of legend or song. But whomsoever she thrills with her moonlight loveliness must cry out. Prose is a sorry garment to hang on her beauty. Maeve is compact of poetry, and of that poetry that is wedded to verse in an eternal, inevitable union.