thout rambling passes on to the next. The effort is
not kept up quite to the close, for the last half dozen pages have the
ordinary clumsy mannerism of their author.

What is the Paradox? That a player of the first rank must have much
judgment, self-possession, and penetration, _but no sensibility_. An
actor with nothing but sense and judgment is apt to be cold; but an
actor with nothing but verve and sensibility is crazy. It is a certain
temperament of good sense and warmth combined, that makes the sublime
player.[274] Why should he differ from the poet, the painter, the
orator, the musician? It is not in the fury of the first impulse that
characteristic strokes occur to any of these men; it is in moments when
they are tranquil and cool, and such strokes come by an unexpected
inspiration.[275] It is for coolness to temper the delirium of
enthusiasm. It is not the violent man who is beside himself that
disposes of us; that is an advantage reserved for the man who possesses
himself. The great poets, the great actors, and perhaps generally all
the great imitators of nature, whatever they may be, are gifted with a
fine imagination, a great judgment, a subtle tact, a sure taste, but
they are creatures of the smallest sensibility. They are equally well
fitted for too many things; they are too busy in looking, in
recognising, and in imitating, to be violently affected within
themselves. Sensibility is hardly the quality of a great genius. He will
have justice; but he will practise it without reaping all the sweetness
of it. It is not his heart, but his head, that does it all. Well, then,
what I insist upon, says Diderot, is that it is extreme sensibility that
makes mediocre actors; it is mediocre sensibility that makes bad actors;
and it is the absolute want of sensibility that prepares actors who
shall be sublime.[276]

This is worked out with great clearness and decision, and some of the
illustrations to which he resorts to lighten the dialogue are amusing
enough. Perhaps the most interesting to us English is his account of
Garrick, whose acquaintance he made towards the year 1765. He says that
he saw Garrick pass his head between two folding doors, and in the space
of a few seconds, his face went successively from mad joy to moderate
joy, from that to tranquillity, from tranquillity to surprise, from
surprise to astonishment, from astonishment to gloom, from gloom to
utter dejection, from dejection to fear, from fear to h