successful, in its verse; the finest gift which it presents to posterity is unquestionably its unrivalled succession of poets, -names of which not only any century but any country might be proud.

It is perhaps interesting to endeavour to see what are the greatest names of influence which have diversified the face of this crowded, turbulent, motley century of literature. To the critics of the first quarter of it, prophesying in a vacuum, certain names appeared the most prominent which we should now not mention in a very rapid survey. But of the earliest generation Wordsworth and Coleridge remain, the Dioscuri of our romantic poetry, every year shining more brightly as they slide. higher up the firmament. In the next generation we still meet Byron, sadly despoiled of his beams, in spite of the overemphatic eulogy of a few untimely admirers, but always acutely alive as an individual; Shelley, who perhaps has passed the meridian of his influence; and Keats, still advancing steadily, and likely, perhaps, in remote posterity, to prove the most durably delightful of all the poets of the century. Later, Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, Rossetti, Swinburne, are the most illustrious poet-figures, each attended and succeeded by presences scarcely less splendid than his own.

In prose, the names are myriad. As we glance very superficially down the whole century, and endeavour to perceive it comprehensively, the most eminent of those who have made literary expression in elaborate prose their object, and have endeavoured to produce in it effects analogous to those of verse, are De Quincey, with his mellifluous splendour; Charles Lamb, with his tender resuscitation of the seventeenth-century forms; Macaulay, the unimaginative, so positive and pleasing; Carlyle, with his turbulence and thunder; Thackeray, and Froude, and Matthew Arnold, in their various modes so harmonious and persuasive; Newman, with his lucid amenity;

Ruskin, unapproached in the splendour of "his flights and his music," like the Bee in Swift's Battle of the Books. To these nine, if a tenth name were to be added, in the judgment of not a few of those of the younger generation it should be that of Pater-an opinion which I record without venturing to affirm or reject it.

The current reviewers of books love to gird at the pretensions of "style," and repeat to weary ears the commonplace that it is what a writer says that is of importance, and not how he says it. It is not worth while to combat this contention, which springs up in the daily and weekly press like a pretty daisy. But when we attempt such a heroic, such a ridiculous task as to recapitulate in a brief essay the crowning merits of a whole century, we see how completely everything unattended by a fine manner disappears. In the larger sense, in the wider outlook, positively nothing whatever remains observable in imaginative literature except what has been recorded with consummate technical skill. In the survey of one hundred years, where so much has been written by an infinite cloud of authors, we have no time nor space to consider whether such an one displayed a valuable chain of moral thoughts or desired to deliver himself of really sound ideas. We are driven to selection, and we select those whose expression, whose form of delivery, was the most original and splendid. Keats had nothing very important to say, and while he was singing it infinitely graver matters were being discussed by Godwin and by Mackintosh, by James Mill and by Jeremy Bentham. But it is now Keats, and not these people at all, who is read, and read with rapture. Perhaps the most striking lesson which the study of English literature in the nineteenth century has to offer us is that the only absolute element of literary durability is style.

THE AMERICAN THEATRE IN THE NINE

TEENTH CENTURY

BY J. RANKEN TOWSE

THE net results of the

HE net results of the nineteenth century in the theatre in America may be summed up comprehensively as a general decadence in the art of acting,-using the term in its strictest sense, a great development of the mechanical and decorative devices of stage representation, and the practical extermination, temporarily at least, of the higher forms of the drama by the substitution of wholly commercial for partly intellectual methods of management. The masterpieces of tragedy and comedy are no longer performed except for their spectacular possibilities; not because the public will not pay to see them — the falsity of that charge has been demonstrated over and over again within the memories of all but the very youngest - but because there are no players capable of interpreting them acceptably, in consequence of the extinction of the old stock companies, the schools in which the histrionic apprentices of preceding generations were instructed in all the mysteries of their craft. Acting, as formerly understood, meant the acquisition of Protean gifts: the concealment of the personal beneath the assumed individuality; the expression of emotions, traits, and habits foreign to the actor and appropriate to the fictitious character or circumstance; the mastery of eloquent and dignified gesture and the cultivation of the vocal resources in order to insure a facile, significant, melodious, and illuminative delivery of the text. There

were certain acknowledged standards to be followed, with living authorities to preserve, illustrate, and enforce them; and thus were established broad laws or traditions, subject, of course, to the modifications of individual genius, which created distinct styles in the various branches of acting, whether tragic or comic, in which all actors were expected to perfect themselves, and which were exacted as a test of proficiency. Beyond doubt, the system, to some extent, fostered a certain formality and artificiality, but it necessitated study and practice, was productive of a wide versatility, and required a variety of accomplishments which entitled the theatrical calling to be accounted a profession. Our modern actors have no such educational advantages, and rather affect to despise them. They seem to proceed upon the assumption that the one purpose of the theatre is not the embodiment of the author's conception, but the exploitation of their own private characteristics. Their object is no longer interpretation, but adaptation; the adaptation, that is, of the author's ideal to their own personalities; and so incapable are they, as a rule, of any originality or invention, that the chief employment of most of our dramatists is a sort of dramatic tailoring the cutting and trimming of theatrical suits to display to the best advantage the meagre proportions of our stage exquisites, who vainly imagine that their individual peculiarities of voice and manner constitute a formula for the expression of every mood or passion known to human nature.

The history of the American stage, from its inception, is connected so intimately and indissolubly with that of the English that to consider it separately would be to ignore the greater part of it. Although American dramatists were plentiful and industrious in the early part of the century, they by no means confined themselves to American subjects, while such national plays as they produced were often of a farcical nature, or, if serious,

deficient in those literary and dramatic qualities essential to long vitality. The standard English drama was still in the ascendant, and was interpreted by the greatest English actors of the day, or by players who had studied acting in their company. From 1800 to 1825 was a splendid period upon the English stage. It was the era of the Kembles, of George Frederick Cooke, of Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, of Eliza O'Neill, of Edmund Kean, of Dora Jordan, Munden, Elliston, the elder Mathews, Liston, Frances Abington, and others scarcely less illustrious. Of these, Cooke, Cooper, and Kean were as well known on one side of the Atlantic as on the other, and it is noteworthy that they could find companies, of mixed English and American nationalities, fully able to support them in all the plays of their extended repertories, at all the then existent American theatrical centres: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Savannah, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Cincinnati.

The limits of this sketch will not permit anything like a detailed account of particular players and performances, and a mere enumeration of names and dates would be tedious and uninstructive. It is only possible to make brief note of salient points, and of these many may be found in the career of Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, which was thoroughly typical of the time. This splendid performer, one of the most versatile, graceful, powerful, and fascinating actors that ever lived, was identified with the American stage from 1800 to 1835, and won triumphs in every department of the drama. A very imperfect list of the characters in which he excelled will convey some notion of the quality of the entertainment then provided for the public, and of the labour entailed upon the actor, when the means of transportation were limited and difficult and changes of programme incessant. Among his most frequent impersonations were Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, Leon (in Rule a Wife), Damon, Beverly, Virginius, Pierre,