Some Sample Walks 63 



ments. There must be a suggestion in the 

 landscape or it is not art My painting 

 has been useful to me in my acting, and 

 my acting helps to improve my pictures 

 by keeping my imagination fresh and 

 active. If the spring gets out of that, a 

 man's work becomes forced, although 

 there must be mental restraint ; the mind 

 must sit in judgment on the fancy when 

 necessary. A man is a crank when his 

 imagination runs away with him. What- 

 ever success I have had comes from self- 

 criticism, and a wish to profit by the criti- 

 cism of others. In acting it is not so easy 

 to change as it is in some other things, for 

 that is largely a matter of temperament, 

 and one cannot change his nature. In all 

 the arts we must be true and direct when 

 it comes to expression. In poetry, when 

 a writer enunciates a great truth, he tells it 

 in the fewest and shortest words. Shake- 

 speare traces the dust of Alexander till he 

 finds it stopping a bung-hole. If Long- 

 fellow had had to put ' bung-hole' into a 

 poem where would he have been? In 

 Shakespeare the thought comes as straight 



