o the lips in that temperament, and yet
not be able to arrange flowers with deftness, draw a volute, or strike a
true chord. And you may be able to do all these, and yet be dead in
heart and cold in brain--a mere curly-wigged poodle doing its clever
tricks with dexterity, and obedient to the hand that feeds it. The
artistic temperament is not this, but something far different. Would you
know what it is, and what it brings? It is the Key of Life, without
which no one can understand the mysteries nor hear the secret music; and
it plants a dagger in the flesh, with the handle outward. And at this
handle, the careless, the brutal, the malicious, and the dense
witted--all Those Others--lunge, pull, and twist by turns. But they do
not see the blood trickling from the wound; and they would neither care
nor yet desist if they did.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Rutland Barrington regards it as a mixed blessing.]

The artistic temperament is a most decidedly "mixed" blessing, and the
more artistic the more mixed! This is strongly demonstrated to me
personally in the person of a _friend_ of my school days who has become
in later years an _acquaintance_ only; a falling away, due entirely to
the abnormal development of his artistic temperament, which will not
allow him to see any good in anything or anybody that does not come up
to his ideal, the artistic temperament in _his_ case taking the form of
a kind of mental yellow jaundice! Of course, I consider that I myself
possess this temperament, and am willing to admit that the natural
friction caused by the meeting with a less highly developed temperament
(?) than his own may have led to the feeling of mental and artistic
superiority which has convinced _one_ of us that association with the
_other_ is undesirable! I fancy that the two classes most strongly
influenced by this temperament are the painters and the actors, who
display characteristics of remarkable resemblance, as, for instance, all
painters (I use the word "painters" because "artists" is applied equally
to both classes) are fully alive to the beauties of Nature in all her
varied moods, but, when those beauties are depicted on the canvasses of
_others_, are somewhat prone to discover a comprehension of those
beauties inferior to their own! So, too, with actors, the majority of
whom possess the feeling, though they may not always express it, that,
although Mr. Garrick Siddons's efforts were distin