spiritual suffering, as conveyed in the pallid countenance and ravaged
figure, in the last act, was that of noble pathos. The delivery of all
the speeches of the broken, humiliated, haunted minister was deeply
touching, not alone in music of voice but in denotement of knowledge of
human nature and human suffering and endurance. The actor who can play
such a part in such a manner is not an experimental artist. Rather let
him be called--in the expressive words of one of his country's poets--

"Sacred historian of the heart
And moral nature's lord."

XXIII.

SALVINI AS KING SAUL AND KING LEAR.

Salvini was grander and finer in King Saul than in any other embodiment
that he presented. He seized the idea wholly, and he executed it with
affluent power. He brought to the part every attribute necessary to its
grandeur of form and its afflicting sympathy of spirit. His towering
physique presented, with impressive accuracy, the Hebrew monarch, chosen
of God, who was "lifted a head and shoulders above the people." His
tremulous sensibility, his knowledge of suffering, his skill in
depicting it, his great resources of voice, his vigour and fineness of
action, his exceptional commingling of largeness and gentleness--all
these attributes combined in that performance, to give magnificent
reality to one of the most sublime conceptions in literature. By his
personation of Saul Salvini added a new and an immortal figure to the
stage pantheon of kings and heroes.

Alfieri's tragedy of _Saul_ was written in 1782-83, when the haughty,
impetuous, and passionate poet was thirty-four years old, and at the
suggestion of the Countess of Albany, whom he loved. He had suffered a
bereavement at the time, and he was in deep grief. The Countess tried to
console him by reading the Bible, and when they came upon the narrative
of Saul the idea of the tragedy was struck out between them. The work
was written with vigorous impulse and the author has left, in his
autobiography, the remark that none of his tragedies cost him so little
labour. _Saul_ is in five acts and it contains 1567 lines--of that
Italian _versi sciolti_ which inadequately corresponds to the blank
verse of the English language. The scene is laid in the camp of Saul's
army. Six persons are introduced, namely, Saul, Jonathan, David, Michel,
Abner, and Achimelech. The time supposed to be occupied by the
action--or rather, by the suffering--of the piece is a single day,