ion then becomes that of the actor, so that the listener is
once removed from the author. Moreover, to the actor everything is
subservient to dramatic effect, and the study of an Othello descends
into an effort to excite an audience rather than to portray correctly
the shifting passions of the jealous Moor. The poet's creation is
adapted to the actor's use by the omission of scenes, changes of scenes,
and additions of scenes, by such verbal alterations and phrasal
transpositions that one does not see Shakespeare's Shylock demanding his
pound of flesh but watches Irving's Shylock whetting his savage knife;
Hamlet is lost in Booth, and Juliet weeps in the tears of Mary Anderson.

But the pleasure a person derives from listening to their thrilling
utterances is as distinct from that which comes to the appreciative
reader as the pleasures of the palate differ from those of the eye. To
the reader everything is his own. He carries his own theater with him.
The scenery he must himself construct and he may alter it at will; the
costumes and personal appearance of the characters are the creations of
his own mind; his thunder has no metallic sound and his lightning always
flashes. He may bring his favorites back with many an encore and may
show his disapproval with hisses that would drown the gallery. He may
linger over the passages he loves and find new encouragement in his
defeats and ever fresh joys for his hours of gloom. He is never hurried:
the lights never go out, the curtain is never rung down.

_Poetry_

The reality of poetry is its beauty, its power of inspiration, its
truth. Its beauty lies in its choice of words, in its figures of speech,
in its music and in its sentiment. Any definition that is not purely
formal is hard to give. Professor Shairp defined the soul of poetry when
he wrote: "Whenever the soul comes vividly in contact with any fact,
truth, or existence, which it realizes and takes home to itself with
more than common intensity, out of that meeting of the soul and its
object there arises a thrill of joy, a glow of emotion; and the
expression of that _glow_, that _thrill_, is poetry."

_The Structure of Poetry_

The form and structure of poetry should be studied, but not to so great
an extent as to blind the eye or deaden the appreciation of its beauty
and sentiment. Brown, who wrote the beautiful story _Rab and His
Friends_, has said, "It is with poetry as with flowers and fruits. We
would all rat