be imitative, than the
conversation of the same men, when, in their hours of intimate
intercourse, the one may have given expression to his philanthropy, and
the other to his friendship. But where the term is most applicable, it
requires to be used guardedly. Even in painting and sculpture, the
artist does not imitate the object in its totality--does not strive to
make an approximation to a _fac-simile_--but he selects certain
_qualities_ of the object for his imitation. The painter confines
himself to colour and outline; the sculptor abstracts the form, and give
it us in the marble.

Accordingly, when we stand before a statue, we do not think of a man,
and then of the statue as the imitation of this original; but the statue
is itself clothed with some of the qualities of the human being, which
give to the cold marble that _half-life_ which we feel the moment we
look upon it. In the same manner, when the dramatist puts his characters
on the stage, they are not imitations of any definite originals, but
they are invested with certain accidents and attributes of humanity,
which give them at once the interest we feel in them, and set them
living and moving in their own mimic world.

And this mimic world is capable of creating an illusion--not such as Dr
Johnson combated--but of a kind he does not appear to have taken into
account. The doctor is triumphant when he denies the existence of that
theatrical delusion presupposed as a ground for the unities. We do not,
as soon as the curtain rises, believe ourselves transported to Rome, nor
do we take the actor upon his word, and believe him to be Caesar the
moment he proclaims his imperial dignity. The illusion of the theatre
springs directly from the _passion_ with which we are infected, not from
the outward pomp and circumstance of the stage. These, even on the most
ignorant of spectators, produce barely the sentiment of wonder and
surprise, never a belief in their reality. The real illusion of the
drama begins, so to speak, not at the beginning, but at the end; it is
the last result, the result of the last vivid word which sprung from the
lips of the actor; and it diffuses a momentary reality over all that
stage apparatus, animate and inanimate, which was there only as a
preparation for that vivid word of the poet.

When the curtain rises, we see very plainly--quite unmistakeably--the
boarded stage before us. It may fill with men and women most gorgeously
attired, and thes