dinary compass, had
not the sonorous roundness and the penetrating sweetness of the rarest
organs, and was subject to a tremulousness which, though often
pleasing, could not but be considered as a defect. His features,
though capable of great expression, had neither the beauty nor the
extraordinary mobility so desirable in an actor. His attitudes and
walk were graceful, picturesque, often superb, but not absolutely free
from conventionalism. Instead of bursting away, as Kean had done, from
the meshes of tradition, he had only expanded and attenuated them to
the utmost, and if they did not really cramp, they still appeared to
circumscribe Nature and truth. It is evident that without the most
persistent efforts he could never have triumphed over obstacles and
gained the highest rank in his profession. How ardent and
conscientious was the struggle a thousand details in this volume bear
testimony. Perhaps the most curious is the description given in a
letter written after his retirement of the methods he had practiced
for repressing exaggeration in gesture, utterance or facial
expression. "I would lie down on the floor, or stand straight against
a wall, or get my arms within a bandage, and, so pinned or confined,
repeat the most violent passages of _Othello, Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth_,
or whatever would require most energy and emotion; I would speak the
most passionate bursts of rage under the supposed constraint of
_whispering them_ in the ear of him of her to whom they were
addressed, thus keeping both voice and gesture in subjection to the
real impulse of the feeling.... I was obliged also to have frequent
recourse to the looking-glass, and had two or three large ones in my
room to reflect each view of the posture I might have fallen into,
besides being under the necessity of acting the passion close to a
glass to restrain the tendency to exaggerate its expression--which was
the most difficult of all--to repress the ready frown, and keep the
features, perhaps I should say the muscles, of the face undisturbed,
whilst intense passion would speak from the eye alone." If the
propriety of some of these exercises be questionable, there can be no
doubt that the general effect of such discipline was to correct the
acquired tendencies of his youth and to chasten his style until it
lacked nothing less than refinement.

All this concerned the _technique_ of his art. Its soul--the thoughts,
the feelings, the characters to be embodied b