In Acting on the other hand almost everything depends on
personal interpretation--on the gesture, the walk, the gaze, the tone of
a Siddons, the _ruse_ smile of a Coquelin, the exquisite, vibrant
intonation of a Bernhardt. 'English Art?' exclaimed Whistler, 'there is
no such thing! Art is art and mathematics is mathematics.' Whistler
erred. Precisely because Art is Art, and Mathematics is Mathematics and a
Science, Art being Art can be English or French; and, more than this,
must be the personal expression of an Englishman or a Frenchman, as a
'Constable' differs from a 'Corot' and a 'Whistler' from both. Surely I
need not labour this. But what is true of the extremes of Art and Science
is true also, though sometimes less recognisably true, of the mean: and
where they meet and seem to conflict (as in History) the impact is that
of the personal or individual mind upon universal truth, and the question
becomes whether what happened in the Sicilian Expedition, or at the trial
of Charles I, can be set forth naked as an alegebraical sum, serene in
its certainty, indifferent to opinion, uncoloured in the telling as in
the hearing by sympathy or dislike, by passion or by character. I doubt,
while we should strive in history as in all things to be fair, if history
can be written in that colourless way, to interest men in human doings. I
am sure that nothing which lies further towards imaginative, creative,
Art can be written in that way.

It follows then that Literature, being by its nature personal, must be by
its nature almost infinitely various. 'Two persons cannot be the authors
of the sounds which strike our ear; and as they cannot be speaking one
and the same speech, neither can they be writing one and the same lecture
or discourse.' _Quot homines tot sententiae._ You may translate that, if
you will, 'Every man of us constructs his sentence differently'; and if
there be indeed any quarrel between Literature and Science (as I never
can see why there should be), I for one will readily grant Science all
her cold superiority, her ease in Sion with universal facts, so it be
mine to serve among the multifarious race who have to adjust, as best
they may, Science's cold conclusions (and much else) to the brotherly
give-and-take of human life.

_Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas..._ Is it possible,
Gentlemen, that you can have read one, two, three or more of the
acknowledged masterpieces of literature without hav