and daintiness are your aversion. The histrionic
Roast Beef of Old England is your craving. You do not ask an actor to
merge or transform himself into the character he assumes, but simply to
employ the author as a medium for the display of his own more or less
striking individuality. In this case, schooling of any kind would, of
course, be fatal. Teaching would only interfere with the development of
that most precious possession, his personality. There is, indeed, only
one way to help the actor of this class--a class numerous and highly
popular in England and America--and that is by pointing out his faults.
This, at first sight, seems a simple matter. His faults are generally
multitudinous and glaring. But woe to the man who points the finger at
them. He is merely qualifying for a species of martyrdom. The libel
laws, reinforcing the instinct of self-preservation, forbid the critics
doing it, and anybody else who tries is instantly regarded as a
malignant private enemy of the criticised. Yet something in this
direction ought to be done, for even actors recruited from the
'Varsities will murder the language, debase the currency of manners,
mumble unchecked of "libery," and "Febuery," and "seckertery," and in
many other barbarous ways betray the vulgarising influence of culture.
Only one or two courses seem open to mitigate this evil--to end the
harmful conspiracy of silence which fosters it. The establishment of
such an academy as Miss Brough, Mr. Tree, and Mr. Alexander favour, if
practicable (but where are the sufficiently eminent teachers to inspire
confidence?) might do much; but better still would be an institution
where not teaching, but criticism, real never-nowadays-practised
criticism, was the object in view. And I think the best kind of
institution for the simultaneous correction of faults and encouragement
of promising talent would be a stock company, run at some big provincial
theatre by a syndicate of London managers, who might there produce their
London successes, turn and turn about, all the year round, and thus be
brought into personal contact with the younger actors (who should be
bound to them for a term of apprenticeship) impelled in their own
interests to impart advice and admonition, and kept on the alert to
discover genuine talent, and to snap it up when they saw it for their
London houses.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: J. T. Grein goes into figures.]

I have expressed my