t. He has not only accomplished the
obvious and essential graces of the actor--the look, the gesture, the
intonation, the stage play--but he has placed his study far deeper. He
has sought to penetrate into the subtlest intentions of the poet, and
made poetry itself the golden key to the secrets of the human heart. He
was original because he never sought to be original but to be truthful;
because, in a word, he was as conscientious in his art as he is in his
actions. Gentlemen, there is one merit of our guest as an actor upon
which, if I were silent, I should be indeed ungrateful. Many a great
performer may attain to a high reputation if he restrains his talents to
acting Shakespeare and the great writers of the past; but it is
perfectly clear that in so doing he does not advance one inch the
literature of his time. It has been the merit of our guest to recognize
the truth that the actor has it in his power to assist in creating the
writer. He has identified himself with the living drama of his period,
and by so doing, he has half created it. Who does not recollect the
rough and manly vigor of Tell, the simple grandeur of Virginius or the
exquisite sweetness and dignity and pathos with which he invested the
self-sacrifice of Ion; and who does not feel that but for him, these
great plays might never have obtained their hold upon the stage, or
ranked among those masterpieces which this age will leave to posterity?
And what charm and what grace, not their own, he has given to the lesser
works of an inferior writer, it is not for me to say.

But, gentlemen, all this, in which he has sought to rally round him the
dramatic writers of his time, brings me at once from the merits of the
actor to those of the manager. I recall, gentlemen, that brief but
glorious time when the drama of England appeared suddenly to revive and
to promise a future that should be worthy of its past; when by a union
of all kindred arts, and the exercise of a taste that was at once
gorgeous and severe, we saw the genius of Shakespeare properly embodied
upon our stage, though I maintain that the ornament was never superior
to the work. Just remember the manner in which the supernatural agency
of the weird sisters was made apparent to our eye, in which the magic
Isle of Prospero rose before us in its mysterious and haunted beauty,
and in which the knightly character of the hero of Agincourt received
its true interpretation from the pomp of the feudal age, a