following of tradition, or on the other by mere clap-trap of deliberate eccentricity. There are the marks of careful study and independent judgment on all of them. The actor never keeps to the beaten track without having convinced himself by reflection that it will lead him aright, or departs from it without having plausible reason to allege for his deviation. Performances of this kind will never lose, and never ought to lose, their interest for men of thought and culture, and I trust they may never fail to win popularity as well as respect for any actor to whom we owe them.

GAR. I trust so too-always supposing, at least, that the execution of them is worthy of the conception. But on that matter you have yet to speak

LEW. And I feel it difficult indeed to do so. Of how many great actors could it be truly said that their execution is worthy of their conceptions? I am speaking, I know, to one of the few of whom this could be said, to one whom nature-in giving him the eye to trace the minutest physical manifestations of human character, and the sensibilities to sympathise with the subtlest emotions, and the brain to combine and co-ordinate the whole in a coherent and consistent personality-endowed also with a face the ever faithful mirror of the changes, of the mind and a voice the unerring interpreter of its moods.

GAR. Sir, your most obliged! On behalf of my face and my voice, my eye and my brain, I thank you heartily for your civility. Mr. Diderot will have something to say to you on the propriety of including my sensibilities; but

in the meantime I commend your discretion in having left

out my figure.

LEW. Nay, Mr. Garrick, you might have silenced the silly taunt to which, I suppose, you make allusion with the pretty reply of Rosalind. You were the Orlando of your countrymen, and your stature was at least " as high as

their hearts."

GAR. Your application, sir, is as pretty as the reply. You are pleased to be flattering, Mr. Lewis, to my poor inches, but for my part I cannot think that a low figure is anything but a disadvantage to an actor.

LEW. 'Tis surely a lesser one than excessive height. An actor shall more easily make us forget the former drawback than the latter: and, indeed, two of the greatest actors of the century succeeding yours were little men. Stature may help an Othello, perhaps, but shortness does no great dis-service to a Richard, an Iago, or a Shylock; nor, I think, even to a Hamlet or a Macbeth. I will allow, however, that a golden mean is the happiest in this as in many other matters.

GAR. And how does your famous actor stand in this respect?

LEW. He exceeds but not greatly, the middle height, and carries himself when in repose, with distinction and dignity. But he does not move with grace, and our witlings make merry-or rather make themselves merry; since such jestings cannot for ever divert the thoughtful -with the spare dimensions and the somewhat ungainly motions of his legs.

GAR. What of his face?

LEW. His face is by no means wanting in mobility; but it suffers in some respects, if it gains in others, from a too strongly-marked individuality of cast. It may seem like a paradox if I say of it that it is too expressive in repose.

GAR. The phrase certainly requires explanation.

LEW. An actor's face is the tablet upon which he is to write the message of his mind to the audience; and it cannot but disadvantage him that it should bear upon it certain characters of nature's inscription which, if indelible, will confuse the actor's own writing, and if effaceable, need to be effaced before a plainly legible palimpsest can be made.

GAR. I am not sure now that I catch your meaning. LEW. An illustration will make it completely clear. I have often diverted myself, Mr. Garrick, by studying the delightful series of character-pictures of yourself in the London club which bears your name, and in comparing them with the best of the portraits painted of you in your own person. And in seeking to discover how one human countenance could have displayed such Protean powers of self-transformation, I came to the conclusion that it was because your face exactly represented the unwritten tablet of which I have spoken.

GAR. Truly? Then upon my word, Mr. Lewes, this squares the account of a good many pretty speeches. So my countenance was vacant and inexpressive in

repose?

LEW. I was prepared, sir, for that sally: but of course you are only affecting to misunderstand

me.

Your

T

countenance was expressive in the highest degree; but when we so speak of a face we mean only that we find or judge it to be quickly responsive to changes in the mind, not that it is habitually suggestive of any particular mood. It is this latter characteristic, I say, which is a disadvantage to an actor; and, considering that it is his business to give prompt expression to all moods, it obviously must be so. Now your own portraits, Mr. Garrick, show the countenance only of an alertminded, and highly-intelligent man. The eyes are bright and piercing, but one cannot call them either grave or mirthful. We feel instinctively that the mouth is of extraordinary pliancy and mobility; but it is neither sad nor merry, nor meditative, nor contemptuous, nor stern. The face is rather round than long; but it no more suggests comedy by its breadth than tragedy by its length. With Mr. Irving, however, the case is exactly reversed. The face is long and melancholy, The deepset eyes look gloomily forth from a sombre brow. A disproportionate length of upper lip and a downward set of its corners gives an unconquerable air of sternness to the mouth. Hence the precise results which we should expect. In the depiction of the sterner passions, in the portrayal of wrath, of horror, of melancholy, of sullen savagery, of despair, Mr. Irving is at his best, and his best is extremely good. But in the expression of love, of pity, and, in a word, of the softer passions in general, he is not, for he could not be, by any means so successful. In comedy-except where comedy arises from the unbending of a grave nature or has to be

associated with a real or affected stateliness of bearing-he is seriously hampered by the peculiarities of his face; and it is the more credit that he should be, as in all but facial expression he is, a comedian of remarkable merit : impersonating, as I am told, even a character so purely light-hearted as that of Beatrice's lover, with indisputable success. But, warmly as I hear this praised, I shall be slow to believe that a face so "marked and quoted by the hand of nature" to express the melancholy humour of Jaques, can ever have adequately rendered the unclouded gaiety of Benedick.

GAR. You have said enough, Mr. Lewes, to convince me that, whatever be the actor's facial disadvantages, he has combated them with great address. But tell me

now of his voice.

LEW. Of that, sir, I shall speak with more reluctance: for in that respect I can scarcely claim for him the credit which you have just now allowed him. He labours here under natural disadvantages which he has been less successful in overcoming. Here again he is sometimes at odds with himself and with the character which he is representing. His deep tones lend themselves well to the expression of the anger, the horror, or the melancholy which his face so well expresses; but in tender utterances his voice lacks tenderness, and in impassioned declamation, it is wanting in resonance and volume. A voice, however, which is thus deficient in melody and compass requires on that very account to be the more carefully disciplined to a just elocution; yet his delivery even of poetic monologue leaves much