VI.

"A creature not too bright and goodFor human nature's daily food."

Women of that sort are not called "cold." The standard is ordinary and it is understood. But when a woman appears in art whose life is not ruled by the love of admiration, whose nature is devoid of vanity, who looks with indifference upon adulation, whose head is not turned by renown, whose composure is not disturbed by flattery, whose simplicity is not marred by wealth,who does not go into theatrical hysterics and offer that condition of artificial delirium as the mood of genius in acting, who above all makes it apparent in her personality and her achievements that the soul can be sufficient to itself and can exist without taking on a burden of the fever or dulness of other lives, there is a flutter of vague discontent among the mystified and bothered rank and file, and we are apprised that she is "cold." That is what happened in the case of Mary Anderson.

What are the faculties and attributes essential to great success in acting? A sumptuous and supple figure that can realise the ideals of statuary; a mobile countenance that can strongly and unerringly express the feelings of the heart and the workings of the mind; eyes that can awe with the majesty or startle with the terror or thrill with the tenderness of their soul-subduing gaze; a voice, deep, clear, resonant, flexible, that can range over the wide compass of emotion and carry its meaning in varying music to every ear and every heart; intellect to shape the purposes and control the means of mimetic art; deep knowledge of human nature; delicate intuitions; the skill to listen aswell as the art to speak; imagination to grasp the ideal of a character in all its conditions of experience; the instinct of the sculptor to give it form, of the painter to give it colour, and of the poet to give it movement; and, back of all, the temperament of genius—the genialised nervous system—to impart to the whole artistic structure the thrill of spiritual vitality. Mary Anderson's acting revealed those faculties and attributes, and those observers who realised the poetic spirit, the moral majesty, and the isolation of mind that she continually suggested felt that she was an extraordinary woman. Such moments in her acting as that of Galatea's mute supplication at the last of earthly life, that of Juliet's desolation after the final midnight parting with the last human creature whom she may ever behold, and that of Hermione's despair when she covers her face and falls as if stricken dead, were the eloquent denotements of power, and in those and such as those—with which her art abounded—was the fulfilment of every hope that her acting inspired and the vindication of every encomium that it received.

Early in her professional career, when considering her acting, the present essayistquoted as applicable to her those lovely lines by Wordsworth:—

"The stars of midnight shall be dearTo her, and she shall lean her earIn many a secret placeWhere rivulets dance their wayward round,And beauty born of murmuring soundShall pass into her face."

In the direction of development thus indicated she steadily advanced. Her affiliations were with grandeur, purity, and loveliness. An inherent and passionate tendency toward classic stateliness increased in her more and more. Characters of the statuesque order attracted her imagination—Ion, Galatea, Hermione—but she did not leave them soulless. In the interpretation of passion and the presentation of its results she revealed the striking truth that her perceptions could discern those consequences that are recorded in the soul and in comparison with which the dramatic entanglements of visible life are puny and evanescent. Though living in the rapid stream of the social world she dwelt aloof from it. She thought deeply, and in mental direction she took the pathway of intellectual power. It is not surprising that the true worth of such a nature was not accurately apprehended. Minds that are self-poised, stately, irresponsive to human weakness, unconventional and self-liberated from allegiance to the commonplace are not fully and instantly discernible, and may well perplex the smiling glance of frivolity; but they are permanent forces in the education of the human race. Mary Anderson retired from the stage, under the pressure of extreme fatigue, in the beginning of 1889 and entered upon a matrimonial life on June 17, 1890. It is believed that her retirement is permanent. The historical interest attaching to her dramatic career justifies the preservation of this commemorative essay.

There is so much beauty in the comedy ofA Winter's Tale—so much thought, character, humour, philosophy, sweetly serene feeling and loveliness of poetic language—that the public ought to feel obliged to any one who successfully restores it to the stage, from which it usually is banished. The piece was written in the maturity of Shakespeare's marvellous powers, and indeed some of the Shakespearean scholars believe it to be the last work that fell from his hand. Human life, as depictedinA Winter's Tale, shows itself like what it always seems to be in the eyes of patient, tolerant, magnanimous experience—the eyes "that have kept watch o'er man's mortality"—for it is a scene of inexplicable contrasts and vicissitudes, seemingly the chaos of caprice and chance, yet always, in fact, beneficently overruled and guided to good ends. Human beings are shown in it as full of weakness; often as the puppets of laws that they do not understand and of universal propensities and impulses into which they never pause to inquire; almost always as objects of benignant pity. The woful tangle of human existence is here viewed with half-cheerful, half-sad tolerance, yet with the hope and belief that all will come right at last. The mood of the comedy is pensive but radically sweet. The poet is like the forest in Emerson's subtle vision of the inherent exultation of nature:—

"Sober, on a fund of joy,The woods at heart are glad."

Mary Anderson doubled the characters of Hermione and Perdita. This had not been conspicuously done until it was done by her, and her innovation, in that respect,was met with grave disapproval. The moment the subject is examined, however, objection to that method of procedure is dispelled. Hermione, as a dramatic person, disappears in the middle of the third act of Shakespeare's comedy and comes no more until the end of the piece, when she emerges as a statue. Her character has been entirely expressed and her part in the action of the drama has been substantially fulfilled before she disappears. There is no intermediate passion to be wrought to a climax, nor is there any intermediate mood, dramatically speaking, to be sustained. The dramatic environment, the dramatic necessities, are vastly unlike, for example, those of Lady Macbeth—one of the hardest of all parts to play well, because exhibited intermittently, at long intervals, yet steadily constrained by the necessity of cumulative excitement. The representative of Lady Macbeth must be identified with that character, whether on the stage or off, from the beginning of it to the end. Hermione, on the contrary, is at rest from the moment when she faints upon receiving information of the death of her boy. A lapse of sixteen years is assumed, and then, standing forth as astatue, she personifies majestic virtue and victorious fortitude. When she descends from the pedestal she silently embraces Leontes, speaks a few pious, maternal and tranquil lines (there are precisely seven of them in the original, but Mary Anderson added two, from "All's Well"), and embraces Perdita, whom she has not seen since the girl's earliest infancy. This is their only meeting, and little is sacrificed by the use of a substitute for the daughter in that scene. Perdita's brief apostrophe to the statue has to be cut, but it is not missed in the representation. The resemblance between mother and daughter heightens the effect of illusion, in its impress equally upon fancy and vision; and a more thorough elucidation is given than could be provided in any other way of the spirit of the comedy. It was a judicious and felicitous choice that the actress made when she selected those two characters, and the fact that her impersonation of them carried a practically disused Shakespearean comedy through a season of one hundred and fifty nights at the Lyceum Theatre in London furnishes an indorsement alike of her wisdom and her ability. She played in a stage version of the piece,in five acts, containing thirteen scenes, arranged by herself.

While Mary Anderson was acting those two parts in London the sum of critical opinion seemed to be that her performance of Perdita was better than her performance of Hermione; but beneath that judgment there was, apparently, the impression that Hermione is a character fraught with superlatively great passions, powers, and qualities, such as are only to be apprehended by gigantic sagacity and conveyed by herculean talents and skill. Those vast attributes were not specified, but there was a mysterious intimation of their existence—as of something vague, formidable, and mostly elusive. But in truth Hermione, although a stronger part than Perdita, is neither complex, dubious, nor inaccessible; and Mary Anderson, although more fascinating in Perdita, could and did rise, in Hermione, to a noble height of tragic power—an excellence not possible for her, nor for anybody, in the more juvenile and slender character.

Hermione has usually been represented as an elderly woman and by such an actress as is technically called "heavy." She ought to be represented as about thirtyyears of age at the beginning of the piece, and forty-six at the end of it. Leontes is not more than thirty-four at the opening, and he would be fifty at the close. He speaks, in his first scene, of his boyhood as only twenty-three years gone, when his dagger was worn "muzzled, lest it should bite its master"—at which time he may have been ten years old; certainly not more, probably less. His words, toward the end of act third, "so sure as this beard's gray," refer to the beard of Antigonus, not to his own. He is a young man when the play begins, and Polixenes is about the same age, and Hermione is a young woman. Antigonus and Paulina are middle-aged persons in the earlier scenes and Paulina is an elderly woman in the statue scene—almost an old woman, though not too old to be given in marriage to old Camillo, the ever-faithful friend. In Mary Anderson's presentation ofA Winter's Talethose details received thoughtful consideration and correct treatment.

In Hermione is seen a type of the celestial nature in woman—infinite love, infinite charity, infinite patience. Such a nature is rare; but it is possible, it exists, and Shakespeare, who depicted everything, didnot omit to portray that. To comprehend Hermione the observer must separate her, absolutely and finally, from association with the passions. Mrs. Jameson acutely and justly describes her character as exhibiting "dignity without pride, love without passion, and tenderness without weakness." That is exactly true. Hermione was not easily won, and the best thing known about Leontes is that at last she came to love him and that her love for him survived his cruel and wicked treatment, chastened him, reinstated him, and ultimately blessed him. Hermione suffers the utmost affliction that a good woman can suffer. Her boy dies, heart-broken, at the news of his mother's alleged disgrace. Her infant daughter is torn from her breast and cast forth to perish. Her husband becomes her enemy and persecutor. Her chastity is assailed and vilified. She is subjected to the bitter indignity of a public trial. It is no wonder that at last her brain reels and she falls as if stricken dead. The apparent anomaly is her survival for sixteen years, in lonely seclusion, and her emergence, after that, as anything but a forlorn shadow of her former self. The poet Shelley has recorded the truth that all great emotions either killthemselves or kill those who feel them. It is here, however, that the exceptional temperament of Hermione supplies an explanatory and needed qualification. Her emotions are never of a passionate kind. Her mind predominates. Her life is in the affections and therefore it is one of thought. She sees clearly the facts of her experience and condition, and she knows exactly how those facts look in the eyes of others. She is one of those persons who possess a keen and just prescience of events, who can look far into the future and discern those resultant consequences of the present which, under the operation of inexorable moral law, must inevitably ensue. Self-poised in the right and free from the disturbing force of impulse and desire, she can await the justice of time, she can live, and she can live in the tranquil patience of resignation. True majesty of the person is dependent on repose of the soul, and there can be no repose of the soul without moral rectitude and a far-reaching, comprehensive, wise vision of events. Mary Anderson embodied Hermione in accordance with that ideal. By the expression of her face and the tones of her voice, in a single speech, the actress placed beyond question her grasp of the character:—

"Good my lords,I am not prone to weeping, as our sexCommonly are—the want of which vain dewPerchance shall dry your pities—but I haveThat honourable grief lodged here, which burnsWorse than tears drown."

The conspicuous, predominant, convincing artistic beauty in Mary Anderson's impersonation of Hermione was her realisation of the part, in figure, face, presence, demeanour, and temperament. She did not afflict her auditor with the painful sense of a person struggling upward toward an unattainable identity. She made you conscious of the presence of a queen. This, obviously, is the main thing—that the individuality shall be imperial, not merely wearing royal attire but being invested with the royal authenticity of divine endowment and consecration. Much emphasis has been placed by Shakespeare upon that attribute of innate grandeur. Leontes, at the opening of the trial scene, describes his accused wife as "the daughter of a king," and in the same scene her father is mentioned as the Emperor of Russia. The gentleman who, in act fifth, recounts to Autolycus the meeting between Leontes and his daughterPerdita especially notes "the majesty of the creature, in resemblance of the mother." Hermione herself, in the course of her vindication—expressed in one of the most noble and pathetic strains of poetical eloquence in our language—names herself "a great king's daughter," therein recalling those august and piteous words of Shakespeare's Katharine:—

"We are a Queen, or long have thought so, certainThe daughter of a king."

Poor old Antigonus, in his final soliloquy, recounting the vision of Hermione that had come upon him in the night, declares her to be a woman royal and grand not by descent only but by nature:—

"I never saw a vessel of like sorrow,So filled and so becoming. In pure white robes,Like very sanctity, she did approach."

That image Mary Anderson embodied, and therefore the ideal of Shakespeare was made a living thing—that glorious ideal, in shaping which the great poet "from all that are took something good, to make a perfect woman." Toward Polixenes, inthe first scene, her manner was wholly gracious, delicately playful, innocently kind, and purely frail. Her quiet archness at the question, "Will you go yet?" struck exactly the right key of Hermione's mood. With the baby prince Mamillius her frolic and banter, affectionate, free, and gay, were in a happy vein of feeling and humour. Her simple dignity, restraining both resentment and grief, in face of the injurious reproaches of Leontes, was entirely noble and right, and the pathetic words, "I never wished to see you sorry, now I trust I shall," could not have been spoken with more depth and intensity of grieved affection than were felt in her composed yet tremulous voice. The entrance, at the trial scene, was made with the stateliness natural to a queenly woman, and yet with a touch of pathos—the cold patience of despair. The delivery of Hermione's defensive speeches was profoundly earnest and touching. The simple cry of the mother's breaking heart, and the action of veiling her face and falling like one dead, upon the announcement of the prince's death, were perfect denotements of the collapse of a grief-stricken woman. The skill with which the actress, in the monument scene—whichis all repose and no movement—contrived nevertheless to invest Hermione with steady vitality of action, and to imbue the crisis with a feverish air of suspense, was in a high degree significant of the personality of genius. For such a performance of Hermione Shakespeare himself has provided the sufficient summary and encomium:—

"Women will love her, that she is a womanMore worth than any man; men that she isThe rarest of all women."

It is one thing to say that Mary Anderson was better in Perdita than in Hermione, and another thing to say that the performance of Perdita was preferred. Everybody preferred it—even those who knew that it was not the better of the two; for everybody loves the sunshine more than the shade. Hermione means grief and endurance. Perdita means beautiful youth and happy love. It does not take long for an observer to choose between them. Suffering is not companionable. By her impersonation of Hermione the actress revealed her knowledge of the stern truth of life, its trials, its calamities, and the possible heroism of character under its sorrowful discipline. Into that identity she passed by the forceof her imagination. The embodiment was majestic, tender, pitiable, transcendent, but its colour was the sombre colour of pensive melancholy and sad experience. That performance was the higher and more significant of the two. But the higher form of art is not always the most alluring—never the most alluring when youthful beauty smiles and rosy pleasure beckons another way. All hearts respond to happiness. By her presentment of Perdita the actress became the glittering image and incarnation of glorious youthful womanhood and fascinating joy. No exercise of the imagination was needful to her in that. There was an instantaneous correspondence between the part and the player. The embodiment was as natural as a sunbeam. Shakespeare has left no doubt about his meaning in Perdita. The speeches of all around her continually depict her fresh and piquant loveliness, her innate superiority, her superlative charm; while her behaviour and language as constantly show forth her nobility of soul. One of the subtlest side lights thrown upon the character is in the description of the manner in which Perdita heard the story of her mother's death—when "attentiveness wounded" her "till,from one sign of dolour to another, she did bleed tears." And of the fibre of her nature there is perhaps no finer indication than may be felt in her comment on old Camillo's worldly view of prosperity as a vital essential to the permanence of love:—

"I think affliction may subdue the cheek,But not take in the mind."

In the thirty-seven plays of Shakespeare there is no strain of the poetry of sentiment and grace essentially sweeter than that which he has put into the mouth of Perdita; and poetry could not be more sweetly spoken than it was by Mary Anderson in that delicious scene of the distribution of the flowers. The actress evinced comprehension of the character in every fibre of its being, and she embodied it with the affluent vitality of splendid health and buoyant temperament—presenting a creature radiant with goodness and happiness, exquisite in natural refinement, piquant with archness, soft, innocent, and tender in confiding artlessness, and, while gleeful and triumphant in beautiful youth, gently touched with an intuitive pitying sense of the thorny aspects of this troubled world. The giving of the flowers completely bewitched her auditors. The startled yet proud endurance of the king's anger was in an equal degree captivating. Seldom has the stage displayed that rarest of all combinations, the passionate heart of a woman with the lovely simplicity of a child. Nothing could be more beautiful than she was to the eyes that followed her lithe figure through the merry mazes of her rustic dance—an achievement sharply in contrast with her usually statuesque manner. It "makes old hearts fresh" to see a spectacle of grace and joy, and that spectacle they saw then and will not forget. The value of those impersonations of Hermione and Perdita, viewing them as embodied interpretations of poetry was great, but they possessed a greater value and a higher significance as denotements of the guiding light, the cheering strength, the elevating loveliness of a noble human soul. They embodied the conception of the poet, but at the same time they illumined an actual incarnation of the divine spirit. They were like windows to a sacred temple, and through them you could look into the soul of a true woman—always a realm where thoughts are gliding angels, and feelings are the faces of seraphs, and sounds are the music of the harps of heaven.

It has sometimes been thought that the acting of Henry Irving is seen at its best in those impersonations of his that derive their vitality from the grim, ghastly, and morbid attributes of human nature. That he is a unique actor, and distinctively a great actor, in Hamlet, Mathias, Eugene Aram, Louis XI., Lesurque, and Dubosc, few judges will deny. His performances of those parts have shown him to be a man of weird imagination, and they have shown that his characteristics, mental and spiritual, are sombre. Accordingly, when it was announced that he would play Dr. Primrose—Goldsmith's simple, virtuous, homely, undramatic village-preacher, theVicar of Wakefield,—a doubt was felt as to his suitability for the part and as to the success of his endeavour. He played Dr. Primrose, and he gained in that character some of the brightest laurels of his professional career. The doubt proved unwarranted. More than one competent observer of that remarkable performance has granted it an equal rank with the best of Henry Irving's achievements; and now, more clearly than before, it is perceived that the current of his inspiration flows as freely from the silver spring of goodness as from the dark and troubled fountain of human misery.

On the first night ofOlivia, at the Lyceum Theatre (it was May 27, 1885, when the present writer happened to be in London), Henry Irving's performance of Dr. Primrose was fettered by a curb of constraint. The actor's nerves had been strained to a high pitch of excitement and he was obviously anxious. His spirit, accordingly, was not fully liberated into the character. He advanced with cautious care and he executed each detail of his design with precise accuracy. To various auditors, for that reason, the work seemed a little Methodistical; and drab is a colour at which the voice of the scoffer is apt to scoff. But the impersonation of Dr. Primrose soon became equally a triumph of expression and of ideal; not only flowing out of goodness, but flowing smoothly and producing the effect of nature. It was notabsolutely and identically the Vicar that Goldsmith has drawn, for its personality was unmarked by either rusticity or strong humour; but it was a kindred and higher type of the simple truth, the pastoral sweetness, the benignity, and the human tenderness of that delightful original. To invest goodness with charm, to make virtue piquant, and to turn common events of domestic life to exquisite pathos and noble exaltation was the actor's purpose. It was accomplished; and Dr. Primrose, thitherto an idyllic figure, existent only in the chambers of fancy, is henceforth as much a denizen of the stage as Luke Fielding or Jesse Rural; a man not merely to be read of, as one reads of Uncle Toby and Parson Adams, but to be known, remembered, and loved.

Wills's drama ofOlivia, based upon an episode in Goldsmith's story, is one of extreme simplicity. It may be described as a series of pictures displaying the consequences of action rather than action itself. It contains an abundance of incident, but the incident is mostly devoid of inherent dramatic force and therefore is such as must derive its chief effect from the manner in which it is treated by the actors who represent the piece. Nevertheless, the piece was found to be, during its first three acts, an expressive, coherent, interesting play. It tells its story clearly and entirely, not by narrative but by the display of characters in their relations to each other. Its language, flavoured here and there with the phraseology of the novel, is consistently appropriate. The fourth and last act is feeble. Nobody can sympathise with "the late remorse of love" in a nature so trivial as that of Thornhill, and the incident of the reconciliation between Olivia and her husband, therefore, goes for nothing. It is the beautiful relation between the father and his daughter that animates the play. It is paternal love that thrills its structure with light, warmth, colour, sincerity, moral force, and human significance. Opinion may differ as to the degree of skill with which Wills selected and employed the materials of Goldsmith's story; but nobody can justly deny that he wrought for the stage a practical dramatic exposition of the beauty and sanctity of the holiest relation that is possible in human life; and to have done that is to have done a noble thing.

Many persons appear to think that criticism falls short of its duty unless it woundsand hurts. Goldsmith himself observed that fact. It was in the story ofThe Vicar of Wakefieldthat he made his playful suggestion that a critic should always take care to say that the picture would have been better if the painter had taken more pains. Wills probably heard more than enough for his spiritual welfare about the faults of his piece; yet there is really nothing weak in the play except the conclusion. It is not easy to suggest, however, in what way the fourth act could be strengthened, unless it were by a recasting and renovation of the character of Squire Thornhill. But the victory was gained, in spite of a feeble climax. Many persons also appear to think that it is a sort of sacrilege to lay hands upon the sacred ark of a classic creation. Dion Boucicault, perceiving this when he made a play aboutClarissa Harlowe, felt moved to deprecate anticipated public resentment of the liberties that he had taken with Richardson's novel. Yet it is difficult to see why the abundant details of that excellent though protracted narrative should not be curtailed, in order to circumscribe its substance within the limits of a practical drama. Jefferson was blamed for condensing and slightlychanging the comedy ofThe Rivals. Yet the author, who probably knew something about his work, deemed it a wretchedly defective piece, and expressed the liveliest regret for having written it. Wills did not reproduce Goldsmith's Vicar upon the stage: in some particulars he widely diverged from it—and his work, accordingly, may be censured. YetThe Vicar of Wakefieldis far from being a faultless production, such as a divinity should be supposed to hedge. Critical students are aware of this. It is not worth while to traverse the old ground. The reader who will take the trouble—and pleasure—to refer to that excellent chapter on Goldsmith in Dr. Craik'sHistory of English Literaturewill find the structural defects of the novel specifically enumerated. If the dramatist has ignored many details he has at least extracted from the narrative the salient points of a consistent, harmonious story. The spectator can enjoy the play, whether he has read the original or not. At the end of its first act he knows the Vicar and his family, their home, their way of life, their neighbours, the two suitors for the two girls, the motives of each and every character, and the relations of each to all; and he sees,what is always touching in the spectacle of actual human life, the contrasted states of circumstance and experience surrounding and enmeshing all. After this preparation the story is developed with few and rapid strokes. Two of the pictures were poems. At the end of act first the Vicar, who has been apprised of the loss of his property, imparts this sad news to his family. The time is the gloaming. The chimes are sounding in the church-tower. It is the hour of evening prayer. The gray-haired pastor calls his loved ones around him, in his garden, and simply and reverently tells them of their misfortune, which is to be accepted submissively, as Heaven's will. The deep religious feeling of that scene, the grouping, the use of sunset lights and shadows, the melody of the chimes, the stricken look in the faces of the women and children, the sweet gravity of the Vicar—instinct with the nobleness of a sorrow not yet become corrosive and lachrymose, as is the tendency of settled grief—and, over all, the sense of blighted happiness and an uncertain future, made up a dramatic as well as a pictorial effect of impressive poetic significance. In act second—which is pictorial almost without intermission—therewas a companion picture, when the Vicar reads, at his fireside, a letter announcing the restitution of his estate; while his wife and children and Mr. Burchell are assembled around the spinet singing an old song. The repose with which Henry Irving made that scene tremulous, almost painful, in its suspense, was observed as one of the happiest strokes of his art. The face and demeanour of Dr. Primrose, changing from the composure of resignation to a startled surprise, and then to almost an hysterical gladness, presented a study not less instructive than affecting of the resources of acting. Only two contemporary actors have presented anything kindred with Mr. Irving's acting in that situation and throughout the scene that is sequent on the discovery of Olivia's flight—Jefferson in America and Got in France.

Evil is restless and irresistibly prone to action. Goodness is usually negative and inert. Dr. Primrose is a type of goodness. In order to invest him with piquancy and dramatic vigour Henry Irving gave him passion, and therewithal various attributes of charming eccentricity. The clergyman thus presented is the fruition of a long life of virtue. He has the complete repose ofinnocence, the sweet candour of absolute purity, the mild demeanour of spontaneous, habitual benevolence, the supreme grace of unconscious simplicity. But he is human and passionate; he shows—in his surroundings, in his quick sympathy with natural beauty, and in his indicated rather than directly stated ideals of conduct—that he has lived an imaginative and not a prosaic life; he is vaguely and pathetically superstitious; and while essentially grand in his religious magnanimity he is both fascinating and morally formidable as a man. Those denotements point at Henry Irving's ideal. For his method it is less easy to find the right description. His mechanical reiteration of the words that are said to him by Sophia, in the moment when the fond father knows that his idolised Olivia has fled with her lover; his collapse, when the harmless pistols are taken from his nerveless hands; his despairing cry, "If she had but died!"; his abortive effort to rebuke his darling child in the hour of her abandonment and misery, and the sudden tempest of passionate affection with which the great tender heart sweeps away that inadequate and paltry though eminently appropriate morality, andtakes its idol to itself as only true love can do—those were instances of high dramatic achievement for which epithets are inadequate, but which the memory of the heart will always treasure.

It was said by the poet Aaron Hill, in allusion to Barton Booth, that the blind might have seen him in his voice and the deaf might have heard him in his visage. Such a statement made concerning an actor now would be deemed extravagant. But, turning from the Vicar to his cherished daughter, that felicitous image comes naturally into the mind. To think of Ellen Terry as Olivia will always be to recall one especial and remarkable moment of beauty and tenderness. It is not her distribution of the farewell gifts, on the eve of Olivia's flight—full although that was of the emotion of a good heart torn and tortured by the conflict between love and duty—and it is not the desperate resentment with which Olivia beats back her treacherous betrayer, when, at the climax of his baseness, he adds insult to heartless perfidy. Those, indeed, were made great situations by the profound sincerity and the rich, woman-like passion of the actress. But there was one instant, in the second act of the play, when the woman's heart has at length yielded to her lover's will, and he himself, momentarily dismayed by his own conquest, strives to turn back, that Ellen Terry made pathetic beyond description. The words she spoke are simply these, "But I said I would come!" What language could do justice to the voice, to the manner, to the sweet, confiding, absolute abandonment of the whole nature to the human love by which it had been conquered? The whole of that performance was astonishing, was thrilling, with knowledge of the passion of love. That especial moment was the supreme beauty of it. At such times human nature is irradiated with a divine fire, and art fulfils its purpose.

Joseph Jefferson has led a life of noble endeavour and has had a career of ample prosperity, culminating in honourable renown and abundant happiness. He was born in Philadelphia, February 20, 1829. He went on the stage when he was four years old and he has been on the stage ever since. His achievements as an actor have been recognised and accepted with admiration in various parts of the world; in Australia and New Zealand and in England, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as in the United States. Among English-speaking actors he is the foremost living representative of the art of eccentric comedy. He has not, of late years, played a wide range of parts, but, restricting himself to a few characters, and those of a representative kind, the manner in which he has acted them is a perfect manner—and it is this that has gained for him his distinctiveeminence. Jefferson, however, is not simply and exclusively an actor. His mind is many sided. He has painted landscape pictures of a high order of merit,—pictures in which elusive moods and subtle sentiments of nature are grasped with imaginative insight and denoted and interpreted with a free, delicate, and luminous touch. He has also addressed the public as an author. He has written an easy, colloquial account of his own life, and that breezy, off-hand, expeditious work,—after passing it as a serial through their Century Magazine,—the Century Company has published in a beautiful volume. It is a work that, for the sake of the writer, will be welcomed everywhere, and, for its own sake as well as his, will everywhere be preserved.

Beginning a theatrical career nearly sixty years ago (1833), roving up and down the earth ever since, and seldom continuing in one place, Jefferson has had uncommon opportunities of noting the development of the United States and of observing, in both hemispheres, the changeful aspect of one of the most eventful periods in the history of the world. Actors, as a class, know nothing but the stage and see nothing but the pursuit in which they are occupied. Whoever has lived much among them knows that fact, from personal observation. Whoever has read the various and numerous memoirs that have from time to time been published by elderly members of that profession must have been amused to perceive that, while they conventionally agree that "all the world's a stage," they are enthusiastically convinced that the stage is all the world. Jefferson's book, although it contains much about the theatre, shows him to be an exception in this respect, even as he is in many others. He has seen many countries and many kinds of men and things, and he has long looked upon life with the thoughtful gaze of a philosopher as well as the wise smile of a humourist. He can, if he likes, talk of something besides the shop. His account of his life "lacks form a little," and his indifference to "accurate statistics"—which he declares to be "somewhat tedious"—is now and then felt to be an embarrassment. One would like to know, for instance, while reading about the primitive theatrical times, when actors sailed the western rivers in flatboats, and shot beasts and birds on the bank, preciselythe extent and limits of that period. Nor is this the only queer aspect of the dramatic past that might be illumined. The total environment of a man's life is almost equally important with the life itself—being, indeed, the scenery amid which the action passes—and a good method for the writing of a biography is that which sharply defines the successive periods of childhood, youth, manhood, and age, and, while depicting the development of the individual from point to point, depicts also the entire field through which he moves, and the mutations, affecting his life, that occur in the historic and social fabric around him. Jefferson, while he has painted vigorously and often happily, on a large canvas, has left many spaces empty and others but thinly filled. The reader who accompanies him may, nevertheless, with a little care, piece out the story so as to perceive it as a sequent, distinct, harmonious, and rounded narrative. Meanwhile the companionship of this heedless historian is delightful—for whether as actor, painter, or writer, Jefferson steadily exerts the charm of a genial personality. You are as one walking along a country road, on a golden autumn day, with a kind, merrycompanion, who knows all about the trees that fringe your track and the birds that flit through their branches, and who beguiles the way with many a humorous tale and many a pleasant remembrance, now impressing your mind by the sagacity of his reflections, now touching your heart by some sudden trait of sentiment or pathos, and always pleasing and satisfying you with the consciousness of a sweet, human, broad, charitable, piquant nature. Although an autobiographer Jefferson is not egotistical, and although a moralist he is not a bore. There is a tinge of the Horatian mood in him—for his reader often becomes aware of that composed, sagacious, half-droll, quizzical mind that indicates, with grave gentleness, the folly of ambition, the vanity of riches, the value of the present hour, the idleness of borrowing trouble, the blessing of the golden medium in fortune, the absurdity of flatterers, and the comfort of keeping a steadfast spirit amid the inevitable vicissitudes of this mortal state.

Jefferson has memories of a boyhood that was passed in Washington, Baltimore, and New York. He went to Chicago in 1838, when that place was scarcely more than a village—making the journey fromNew York to Buffalo in a canal-boat, and sailing thence, aboard a steamer, through the lakes of Erie, Huron, and Michigan. He travelled with his parents, and they gave dramatic performances, in which he assisted, in western towns. It was a time of poverty and hardship, but those ills were borne cheerfully—the brighter side of a hard life being kept steadily in view, and every comic incident of it being seen and appreciated. His father was a gentleman of the Mark Tapley temperament, who came out strong amid adverse circumstances, and the early disappearance from the book of that delightful person (who died in 1842, of yellow fever, at Mobile), is a positive sorrow. His mother, a refined and gentle lady, of steadfast character and of uncommon musical and dramatic talents and accomplishments, survived till 1849, and her ashes rest in Ronaldson's cemetery, in Philadelphia. Jefferson might have said much more about his parents, and especially about his famous grandfather, without risk of becoming tedious—for they were remarkably interesting people; but he was writing his own life and not theirs, and he has explained that he likes not to dwell much upon domesticmatters. The story of his long ancestry of actors, which reaches back to the days of Garrick (for there have been five generations of the Jeffersons upon the stage), he has not mentioned; and the story of his own young days is hurried rapidly to a conclusion. He was brought on the stage, when a child, at the theatre in Washington, D.C., by the negro comedian Thomas D. Rice, who emptied him out of a bag; and thereupon, being dressed as "a nigger dancer," in imitation of Rice, he performed the antics of Jim Crow. He adverts to his first appearance in New York and remembers his stage combat with Master Titus; and he thinks that Master Titus must remember it also,—since one of that boy's big toes was nearly cut off in the fray. That combat occurred at the Franklin theatre, September 30, 1837—a useful fact that the autobiographer cares not to mention. He speedily becomes a young man, as the reader follows him through the first three chapters of his narrative,—of which there are seventeen,—and he is found to be acting, as a stock player, in support of James W. Wallack, Junius Brutus Booth, W.C. Macready, and Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Wallack, Jr. Upon the powers and peculiarities of those actors, and upon the traits of many others who, like them, are dead and gone (for there is scarcely a word in the book about any of his living contemporaries), he comments freely and instructively. He was "barn-storming" in Texas when the Mexican war began, and he followed in the track of the American army, and acted in the old Spanish theatre in Matamoras, in the spring of 1846; and, subsequently, finding that this did no good, he opened a stall there for the sale of coffee and other refreshments, in the corner of a gambling hell. He calls to mind the way of domestic life and the every-day aspect of houses, gardens, people, and manners in Matamoras, and those he describes with especial skill—deftly introducing the portraiture of a dusky, black-eyed, volatile Mexican girl, to whom he lost, temporarily, the light heart of youth, and whom he thinks that he might have married had he not deemed it prudent to journey northward toward a cooler clime. In New Orleans, at about that time, he first saw the then young comedian John E. Owens: and he records the fact that his ambition to excel as an actor was awakened by the spectacle of that rival's success. Owenshas had his career since then,—and a brilliant one it was,—and now he sleeps in peace.

After that experience Jefferson repaired to Philadelphia, and during the next ten years, from 1846 to 1856, he wrought in that city and in New York, Baltimore, Richmond, and other places, sometimes as a stock actor, sometimes as a star, and sometimes as a manager. He encountered various difficulties. He took a few serious steps and many comic ones. He was brought into contact with some individuals that were eminent and with some that were ludicrous. He crossed the Allegheny mountains in mid-winter, from Wheeling to Cumberland, in a cold stage-coach, and almost perished. He was a member of Burton's company at the Arch Street theatre, Philadelphia, and was one of the chorus in that great actor's revival ofAntigone—which there is little doubt that the chorus extinguished. He was the low comedian in Joseph Foster's amphitheatre, where he sangCaptain Kiddto fill up the "carpenter scenes," and where he sported amid the turbulent rhetorical billows ofTimour the TartarandThe Terror of the Road. He acted in New York at the Franklin theatre and also atthe Chatham. He managed theatres in Macon and Savannah, where he brought out the blithe Sir William Don; and one of the sprightliest episodes of his memoir is the chapter in which he describes that tall, elegant, nonchalant adventurer. Don was a Scotchman, born in 1826, who made his first appearance in America in November 1850 at the Broadway theatre, New York, and afterward drifted aimlessly through the provincial theatres. Don was married in 1857 to Miss Emily Sanders, and he died at Tasmania, March 19, 1862, and was buried at Hobartstown. Jefferson saw the dawn of promise in the career of Julia Dean,—when that beautiful girl was acting with him, in the stock—and afterwards he saw the noonday splendour of her prosperity; and he might have recalled, but that sad touches are excluded from his biography, her mournful decline. In 1853 he was stage manager of the Baltimore museum, for Henry C. Jarrett, and in 1854 he was manager of the Richmond theatre, for John T. Ford. Among the players whom he met, and who deeply influenced him, were James E. Murdoch, Henry Placide, Edwin Forrest, Edwin Adams, and Agnes Robertson. But the actor who mostaffected the youth of Joseph Jefferson, whose influence sank deepest into his heart and has remained longest in his memory and upon his style, was his half-brother, Charles Burke: and certainly, as a serio-comic actor, it may be doubted whether Charles Burke ever was surpassed. That comedian was born March 27, 1822, in Philadelphia, and he died in New York, November 10, 1854. Jefferson's mother, Cornelia Frances Thomás, born in New York, October 1, 1796, the daughter of French parents, was married in her girlhood to the Irish comedian Thomas Burke, who died in 1824; and she contracted her second marriage, with Jefferson's father, in 1826. Jefferson writes at his best in the description of scenery, in the analysis of character, and in the statement of artistic principles. His portraiture of Murdoch, as a comedian, is particularly clear and fine. His account of Julia Dean's hit, as Lady Priory, is excellent and will often be cited. His portrayal of the reciprocal action of Burton and Charles Burke, when they were associated in the same piece, conveys a valuable lesson. His anecdotes of Edwin Forrest present that grim figure as yet again the involuntary cause of mirth. Itoften was so. Jefferson, however, draws a veil of gentle charity over those misused powers, that perverse will, that wasted life. The most striking dramatic portraiture in the book is that bestowed on Charles Burke, William Warren, George Holland, Tom Glessing, and Edwin Adams. Those were men who lived in Jefferson's affections, and when he wrote about them he wrote from the heart. The sketch of Glessing, whom everybody loved that ever knew him, is in a touching strain of tender remembrance.

Jefferson visited England and France in 1856, but not to act. At that time he saw the famous English comedians Compton, Buckstone, Robson, and Wright, and that extraordinary actor, fine alike in tragedy and comedy, the versatile Samuel Phelps. In 1857 he was associated with Laura Keene at her theatre in New York; and from that date onward his career has been upon a high and sunlit path, visible to the world. His first part at Laura Keene's theatre was Dr. Pangloss. Then cameOur American Cousin, in which he gained a memorable success as Asa Trenchard, and in which Edward A. Sothern laid the basis of that fantastic structure ofwhim and grotesque humour that afterward became famous as Lord Dundreary. Sothern, Laura Keene, and William Rufus Blake, of course, gained much of Jefferson's attention at that time, and he has not omitted to describe them. His account of Blake, however, does not impart an adequate idea of the excellence of that comedian. In 1858 he went to the Winter Garden theatre, and was associated with the late Dion Boucicault. His characters then were Newman Hoggs, Caleb Plummer, and Salem Scudder—inNicholas Nickleby,The Cricket on the Hearth, andThe Octoroon. Mr. Boucicault told him not to make Caleb Plummer a solemn character at the beginning—a deliverance that Jefferson seems to have cherished as one of colossal wisdom. He made a brilliant hit in Salem Scudder, and it was then that he determined finally to assume the position of a star. "Art has always been my sweetheart," exclaims Jefferson, "and I have loved her for herself alone." No observer can doubt that who has followed his career. It was in 1859 that he reverted to the subject of Rip Van Winkle, as the right theme for his dramatic purpose. He had seen Charles Burke as Rip, and he knew the severalversions of Washington Irving's story that had been made for the theatre by Burke, Hackett, and Yates. The first Rip Van Winkle upon the stage, of whom there is any record in theatrical annals, was Thomas Flynn (1804-1849). That comedian, the friend of the elder Booth, acted the part for the first time on May 24, 1828, at Albany. Charles B. Parsons, who afterward acted in many theatres as Rip, and ultimately became a preacher, was, on that night, the performer of Derrick. Jefferson's predecessors as Rip Van Winkle were remarkably clever men—Flynn, Parsons, Burke, Chapman, Hackett, Yates, and William Isherwood. But it remained for Jefferson to do with that character what no one else had ever thought of doing—to lift it above the level of the tipsy rustic and make it the poetical type of the drifting and dreaming vagrant—half-haunted, half-inspired, a child of the trees and the clouds. Jefferson records that he was lying on the hay in a barn in Paradise Valley, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1859, taking advantage of a rainy day to read Washington Irving'sLife and Letters, when that plan came to him. It proved an inspiration of happiness to thousands ofpeople all over the world. The comedian made a play for himself, on the basis of Charles Burke's play, but with one vital improvement—he arranged the text and business of the supernatural scene so that Rip only should speak, while the ghosts should remain silent. That stroke of genius accomplished his object. The man capable of that exploit in dramatic art could not fail to win the world, because he would at once fascinate its imagination while touching its heart.

In 1861 Jefferson went to California and thence to Australia, and in the latter country he remained four years. He has written a fine description of the entrance to the harbour at Sydney. His accounts of "the skeleton dance," as he saw it performed by the black natives of that land; of his meeting with the haunted hermit in the woods; of the convict audience at Tasmania, for whom he acted inThe Ticket-of-Leave Man; and of the entertainment furnished in a Chinese theatre, are compositions that would impart to any book the interest of adventure and the zest of novelty. Such pictures as those have a broad background; they are not circumscribed within the proscenium frame. The man is seenin those passages as well as the actor; and he plays his part well, amid picturesque surroundings of evil and peril, of tragedy and of pathos. In Australia Jefferson met Charles Kean and his wife (Ellen Tree), of whom his sketches are boldly drawn and his memories are pleasant. Mr. and Mrs. Kean afterward made their farewell visit to the United States, beginning, when they reached New York (from San Francisco, in April 1865), withHenry VIII., and closing withThe Jealous Wife. In 1865 Jefferson went from Australia to South America and passed some time in Lima, where he saw much tropical luxury and many beautiful ladies—an inspiriting spectacle, fittingly described by him in some of the most felicitous of his fervent words. In June 1865 he reached London, and presently he came forth, at the Adelphi, as Rip Van Winkle,—having caused the piece to be rewritten by Mr. Boucicault, who introduced the colloquy of the children, paraphrased for it the recognition scene between King Lear and Cordelia, and kept Gretchen alive to be married to Derrick. Mr. Boucicault, however, had no faith in the piece or the actor's plan, and down to the last moment prophesied failure. Jefferson's success was unequivocal. Friends surrounded him and in the gentle and genial record that he has made of those auspicious days some of the brightest names of modern English literature sparkle on his page. Benjamin Webster, Paul Bedford, John Billington, John Brougham, and Marie Wilton were among the actors who were glad to be his associates. Robertson, the dramatist, was his constant companion—one of the most intellectual and one of the wittiest of men. Planché, aged yet hearty and genial (and no man had more in his nature of the sweet spirit of the comrade), speedily sought him. Charles Reade and Anthony Trollope became his cronies; and poor Artemas Ward arrived and joined the party just as Jefferson was leaving it—as bright a spirit, as kind a heart, and as fine and quaint a humourist as ever cheered this age—from which he vanished too soon for the happiness of his friends and for the fruition of his fame. "I was much impressed," says the comedian, "with Ward's genial manner; he was not in good health, and I advised him to be careful lest the kindness of London should kill him." That advice was not heeded, and the kindness of London speedily ended Ward's days.

Jefferson came home in 1866 and passed ten years in America—years of fame and fortune, whereof the record is smooth prosperity. Its most important personal incident was his second marriage, on December 20, 1867, at Chicago, to Miss Sarah Warren. In July 1873 he made a voyage to Europe, with his wife and William Warren, the comedian, and remained there till autumn. From November 1, 1875 to April 29, 1876 and from Easter 1877 until midsummer he was again acting in London, where he redoubled his former success. In October 1877 he returned home, and since then he has remained in America. The chronicle that he has written glides lightly over these latter years, only now and then touching on their golden summits. The manifest wish of the writer has been to people his pages as much as possible with the men and women of his artistic circle and knowledge who would be likely to interest the reader. Robert Browning, Charles Kingsley, and George Augustus Sala come into the picture, and there is a pleasing story of Browning and Longfellow walking arm in arm in London streets till driven into a cab by a summer shower, when Longfellow insisted on passing his umbrella through the hole in the roof, for the protection of the cab-driver. Jefferson lived for one summer in an old mansion at Morningside, Edinburgh, and he dwells with natural delight on his recollections of that majestic city. He had many a talk, at odd times, with the glittering farceur Charles Mathews, about dramatic art, and some of this is recorded in piquant anecdotes. "By many," says the amiable annalist, "he was thought to be cold and selfish; I do not think he was so." There is a kind word for Charles Fechter, whose imitations of Frederick Lemaitre, inBelphegor, the Mountebank, live in Jefferson's remembrance as wonderfully graphic. There are glimpses of James Wallack, Walter Montgomery, Peter Richings, E.A. Sothern, Laura Keene, James G. Burnett, John Gilbert, Tyrone Power, Lester Wallack, John McCullough, John T. Raymond, Mr. and Mrs. Barney Williams, John Drew (the elder), F.S. Chanfrau, Charlotte Cushman, Mrs. Drake, and many others; and the record incorporates two letters, not before published, from John Howard Payne, the author ofHome, Sweet Home—a melody that is the natural accompaniment of Jefferson's life.There is a pretty picture of that ancient supper-room at No. 2 Bulfinch Place, Boston—Miss Fisher's kitchen—as it appeared when William Warren sat behind the mound of lobsters, at the head of the table, while the polished pewters reflected the cheerful light, and wit and raillery enlivened the happy throng, and many a face was wreathed with smiles that now is dark and still forever. In one chapter Jefferson sets forth his views upon the art of acting; and seldom within so brief a compass will so many sensible reflections be found so simply and tersely expressed. The book closes with words of gratitude for many blessings, and with an emblematic picture of a spirit resigned to whatever vicissitudes of fortune may yet be decreed.

Jefferson's memoir is a simple message to simple minds. It will find its way to thousands of readers to whom a paper by Addison or an essay by Hume would have no meaning. It will point for them the moral of a good life. It will impress them with the spectacle of a noble actor, profoundly and passionately true to the high art by which he lives, bearing eloquent testimony to its beauty and its worth, and to the fine powers and sterling virtues of thegood men and women with whom he has been associated in its pursuit. It will display to them—and to all others who may chance to read it—a type of that absolute humility of spirit which yet is perfectly compatible with a just pride of intellect. It will help to preserve interesting traits of famous actors of an earlier time, together with bright stories that illumine the dry chronicle of our theatrical history. And, in its simple record of the motives by which he has been impelled, and the artistic purposes that he has sought to accomplish, it will remain an eloquent, vital, indestructible memorial to the art and the character of a great comedian, when the present reality of his exquisite acting shall have changed to a dim tradition and a fading memory of the past.

Fifty years from now the historian of the American stage, if he should be asked to name the actor of this period who was most beloved by the people of this generation, will answer that it was Joseph Jefferson. Other actors of our time are famous, and they possess in various degrees the affection of the public. Jefferson is not only renowned but universally beloved. To state the cause of this effect is at once to explain his acting and to do it the honour to which it is entitled. That cause can be stated in a single sentence. Jefferson is at once a poetic and a human actor, and he is thus able to charm all minds and to win all hearts. His success, therefore, is especially important not to himself alone but to the people.

Public taste is twofold. It has a surface liking, and it has a deep, instinctive, natural preference. The former is alert, capricious,incessant, and continually passes from fancy to fancy. It scarcely knows what it wants, except that it wants excitement and change. Those persons in the dramatic world who make a point to address it are experimental speculators, whose one and only object is personal gain, and who are willing and ready to furnish any sort of entertainment that they think will please a passing caprice, and thereby will turn a penny for themselves. To judge the public entirely by this surface liking is to find the public what Tennyson once called it—a many-headed beast. With that animal every paltry and noxious thing can be made, for a time, to flourish; and that fact leads observers who do not carefully look beneath the surface to conclude that the public is always wrong. But the deep preference of the public comes into the question, and observers who are able to see and to consider that fact presently perceive that the artist, whether actor or otherwise, who gives to the public, not what it says it wants but what it ought to have, is in the long run the victor. The deep preference is for the good thing, the real thing, the right. It is not intelligent. It does not go with thinking and reasoning. It does notpretend to have grounds of belief. It simply responds. But upon the stage the actor who is able to reach it is omnipotent. Jefferson conspicuously is an actor who appeals to the deep, instinctive, natural preference of humanity, and who reaches it, arouses it, and satisfies it. Throughout the whole of his mature career he has addressed the nobler soul of humanity and given to the people what they ought to have; and the actor who is really able to do that naturally conquers everything. It is not a matter of artifice and simulation; it is a matter of being genuine and not a sham.

Still further, Jefferson has aroused and touched and satisfied the feelings of the people, not by attempting to interpret literature but by being an actor. An actor is a man who acts. He may be an uneducated man, deficient in learning and in mental discipline, and yet a fine actor. The people care not at all for literature. They do not read it, and they know nothing about it until it is brought home to their hearts by some great interpreter of it. What they do know is action. They can see and they can feel, and the actor who makes them see and feel can do anythingwith them that he pleases. It is his privilege and his responsibility. Jefferson is one of those artists (and they are few) who depend for their effects not upon what authors have written but upon impersonation. He takes liberties with the text. It would not perhaps be saying too much to say that he does not primarily heed the text at all. He is an actor; and speaking with reference to him and to others like him it would perhaps be well if those persons who write criticisms upon the stage would come to a definite conclusion upon this point and finally understand that an actor must produce his effects on the instant by something that he does and is, and not by rhetoric and elocution, and therefore that he should not be expected to repeat every word of every part, or to be a translator of somebody else, but that he must be himself. If we want the full, literal text of Shakespeare we can stop at home and read it. What we want of the actor is that he should give himself; and the true actor does give himself. The play is the medium. A man who acts Romeo must embody, impersonate, express, convey, and make evident what he knows and feels about love. He need not trouble himself about Shakespeare. That greatpoet will survive; while if Romeo, being ever so correct, bores the house, Romeo will be damned. Jefferson is an actor who invariably produces effect, and he produces it by impersonation, and by impersonation that is poetic and human.

Jefferson's performance of Acres conspicuously exemplifies the principles that have been stated here. He has not hesitated to alter the comedy ofThe Rivals, and in his alteration of it he has improved it. Acres has been made a better part for an actor, and a more significant and sympathetic part for an audience. You could not care particularly for Acres if he were played exactly as he is written. You might laugh at him, and probably would, but he would not touch your feelings. Jefferson embodies him in such a way that he often makes you feel like laughing and crying at the same moment, and you end with loving the character, and storing it in your memory with such cherished comrades of the fancy as Mark Tapley and Uncle Toby. There is but little human nature in Acres as Sheridan has drawn him, and what there is of human nature is coarse; but as embodied by Jefferson, while he never ceases to be comically absurd, he becomesfine and sweet, and wins sympathy and inspires affection, and every spectator is glad to have seen him and to remember him. It is not possible to take that sort of liberty with every author. You can do it but seldom with Shakespeare; never in any but his juvenile plays. But there are authors who can be improved by that process, and Sheridan—inThe Rivals, not inThe School for Scandal—is one of them. And anyway, since it ought to be felt, known, understood, and practically admitted that an actor is something more than a telegraph wire, that his personal faculty and testimony enter into the matter of embodiment and expression, Jefferson's rare excellence and great success as Acres should teach a valuable lesson, correcting that pernicious habit of the critical mind which measures an actor by the printed text of a play-book and by the hide-bound traditions of custom on the stage. Jefferson has had a royal plenitude of success as an actor, chiefly with the part of Rip Van Winkle, but also with the characters of Caleb Plummer, Bob Brierly, Dr. Pangloss, Dr. Ollapod, Mr. Golightly, and Hugh de Brass. The reason of that success cannot be found in conventional adherence to stage customs and critical standards.

Jefferson has gained his great power over the people—of which his great fame is the shadow—- by giving himself in his art—his own rich and splendid nature and the crystallised conclusions of his experience. As an artist, when it comes to execution, he leaves nothing to chance. The most seemingly artless of his proceedings is absolutely defined in advance, and never is what heedless observers call impulsive and spontaneous. But his temperament is free, fluent, opulent, and infinitely tender; and when the whole man is aroused, this flows into the moulds of literary and dramatic art and glorifies them. When you are looking at Jefferson as Acres in the duel scene inThe Rivals, you laugh at him, but almost you laugh through your tears. When you see Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle confronting the ghosts on the lonely mountain-top at midnight, you see a display of imaginative personality quite as high as that of Hamlet in tremulous sensibility to supernatural influence, although wholly apart from Hamlet in altitude of intellect and in anguish of experience. The poetry of the impersonation, though, is entirely consonant with Hamlet, and that is the secret of Jefferson's exceptional hold upon the heart and the imagination of his time. The public taste does not ask Jefferson to trifle with his art. Its deep, spontaneous, natural preference feels that he is a true actor, and so yields to his power, and enjoys his charm, and is all the time improved and made fitter to enjoy it. He has reached as great a height as it is possible to reach in his profession. He could if he chose play greater parts than he has ever attempted; he could not give a better exemplification than he gives, in his chose and customary achievement, of all that is distinctive, beautiful, and beneficent in the art of the actor.

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