by all America; and there will come no answer, since the
actor's art will then be only a tale that is told. So Beau Brummel died
with Mr. Mansfield; and if our children, who never saw his superb
performance, chance in future years to read the lines of Mr. Fitch's play,
they will hardly believe us when we tell them that the character of Brummel
once was great. With such current instances before us, it ought not to be
so difficult as many university professors find it to understand the vogue
of certain plays of the Elizabethan and Restoration eras which seem to us
now, in the reading, lifeless things. When we study the mad dramas of Nat
Lee, we should remember Betterton; and properly to appreciate Thomas Otway,
we must imagine the aspect and the voice of Elizabeth Barry.

It may truthfully be said that Mrs. Barry created Otway, both as dramatist
and poet; for _The Orphan_ and _Venice Preserved_, the two most pathetic
plays in English, would never have been written but for her. It is often
thus within the power of an actor to create a dramatist; and his surest
means of immortality is to inspire the composition of plays which may
survive his own demise. After Duse is dead, poets may read _La Citta
Morta_, and imagine her. The memory of Coquelin is, in this way, likely to
live longer than that of Talma. We can merely guess at Talma's art, because
the plays in which he acted are unreadable to-day. But if M. Rostand's
_Cyrano_ is read a hundred years from now, it will be possible for students
of it to imagine in detail the salient features of the art of Coquelin. It
will be evident to them that the actor made love luringly and died
effectively, that he was capable of lyric reading and staccato gasconade,
that he had a burly humor and that touch of sentiment that trembles into
tears. Similarly we know to-day, from the fact that Shakespeare played the
Ghost in _Hamlet_, that he must have had a voice that was full and resonant
and deep. So from reading the plays of Moliere we can imagine the robust
figure of Magdeleine Bejart, the grace of La Grange, the pretty petulance
of the flighty fair Armande.

Some sense of this must have been in the mind of Sir Henry Irving when he
strove industriously to create a dramatist who might survive him and
immortalise his memory. The facile, uncreative Wills was granted many
chances, and in _Charles I_ lost an opportunity to make a lasting drama.
Lord Tennyson came near the mark in _Becket_; but