1895.] on Acting : an Art. 427 



gone ! Aye, and gone with them millions of art-works by myriads 

 of workers in countless ages — men now nameless, but once full of 

 honour, and whose work was, and is, placed in the existing category 

 of the arts. 



So much for length of endurance ; but what of its records ? Are 

 the works only to exist, and not the memory of them ? Must a 

 record be written or graven in iron or marble ; or is it sufficient 

 that it lives from mouth to mouth till the very cause of its memory 

 be forgotten ? Nay, more ; we ourselves have only memories to 

 help us in our daily life, for what is all education but organised 

 memory ? The efforts of plastic art which throughout our lives we 

 have seen and loved are seldom before us, but take their place in 

 memory, beside the fleeting visions which pass before us on the stage. 

 Is not Eoscius a name that lives in history, though he was neither 

 poet, nor sculptor, nor painter, nor architect, nor musician? It 

 would be foolish to say that a work is not a work of art because it 

 has not permanent existence in material shape. If this be a condi- 

 tion of art, then on the destruction of a work the worker ceases to 

 have been an artist. All things are comparative, and we ourselves, 

 who have only the span of a few years to live, cannot claim immor- 

 tality for our work. 



As to the medium in which the actor works, I would seriously 

 ask if there is any one so benighted as to put it forth as an argu- 

 ment. Was that lion which the sculptor wrought in butter for his 

 patron's table less a work of art than the noble work of the dying lion 

 hewn in the rock at Lucerne ? Alas for the sculptor's storied pathos 

 if this be so ! for already time and weather have set their canker- 

 ing hands upon the work. Was the shepherd lad's drawing on the 

 rock, as he tended his sheep, less by its nature a work of art than 

 when he painted altar pieces in the later years ? Were the painters 

 before the Van Eycks less artists than their successors because, in 

 default of better mordants, they had to use unpleasant materials to 

 fix their pigments ? Why, it is the sculptor himself who works in 

 the common clay, and it is his labourer who chisels out the marble 

 statue, from the clay model of his master. Why, then, should it be 

 any barrier to work being the work of art, because its elements are 

 the most complex known to man, and the tools in use no mere work 

 of the hands of man, but the noblest powers and qualities given by 

 God — the power of sympathy, the force of passion, the earnestness 

 of conscious effort ? 



The old professors have counted music amongst the arts. Let me 

 ask them a few questions relating to it. Is the art confined to the 

 coirposer, or is it shared by the interpreter ? If the former, why is 

 it not enough to print the score, and let men read for themselves ; 

 it would save much labour, much expense. Wherein, with regard 

 to composition, is the limitation of art, since counterpoint is a science, 

 and melody an inspiration ? Was there no art in the interpretation 

 of his score by Paganini, by Liszt, by Eubinstein — or is all the 



