THE DRAMA cxxv 



Saluces, and perhaps only in the second place, by the wish to 

 treat a story (as he phrased it) like a sum in arithmetic. I do 

 not think he quite succeeded ; but I must own myself no fit 

 judge. Fleeming and I were teacher and taught as to the prin- 

 ciples, disputatious rivals in the practice, of dramatic writing. 



Acting had always, ever since Rachel and the Marseillaise, a 

 particular power on him. ' If I do not cry at the play,' he 

 used to say, ( I want to have my money back.' Even from a 

 poor play with poor actors he could draw pleasure. ' Giaco- 

 metti's Misabetta* I find him writing, * fetched the house 

 vastly. Poor Queen Elizabeth ! And yet it was a little good.' 

 And again, after a night of Salvini : ' I do not suppose any 

 one with feelings could sit out Othello, if lago and Desdemona 

 were acted.' Salvini was, in his view, the greatest actor he 

 had seen. We were all indeed moved and bettered by the 

 visit of that wonderful man. ' I declare I feel as if I could 

 pray ! ' cried one of us, on the return from Hamlet. ( That is 

 prayer,' said Fleeming. W. B. Hole and I, in a fine enthu- 

 siasm of gratitude, determined to draw up an address to Salvini, 

 did so, and carried it to Fleeming ; and I shall never forget 

 with what coldness he heard and deleted the eloquence of our 

 draft, nor with what spirit (our vanities once properly mor- 

 tified) he threw himself into the business of collecting signa- 

 tures. It was his part, on the ground of his Italian, to see and 

 arrange with the actor ; it was mine to write in the Academy 

 a notice of the first performance of Macbeth. Fleeming opened 

 the paper, read so far, and flung it on the floor. ' No,' he cried, 

 ' that won't do. You were thinking of yourself, not of Salvini ! ' 

 The criticism was shrewd as usual, but it was unfair through 

 ignorance ; it was not of myself that I was thinking, but of the 

 difficulties of my trade which I had not well mastered. Another 

 unalloyed dramatic pleasure which Fleeming and I shared the 

 year of the Paris Exposition, was the Marquis de Villemer, that 

 blameless play, performed by Madeleine Brohan, Delaunay, 

 Worms, and Broisat an actress, in such parts at least, to whom 

 I have never seen full justice rendered. He had his fill of 

 weeping on that occasion ; and when the piece was at an end, 



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