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 in _The 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 bette