author, or manager be his dearest friend. Secondly, he should cherish no loftier ideal of the stage than that of its being an instrument of public entertainment. When he holds her forth as an ethical influence he is apt to stray into the deification of dulness. How often and how truly has it been said that the business of the stage is not to teach, but to amuse. So long only as she entertains her audiences is she fulfilling her mission. I am not thinking of poor dear Ibsen and his fellows here. To do them justice, they do not make the smallest attempt at didactics. They are, as it were, a medical lecturer's assistants, who indicate (and can describe) an ulcer; but there their work ends; they suggest no cure. The duty of the stage is to provide an intellectual and sensuous (we do not use the word in its suburban sense) gratification by wit, manners, historical truth, and the artistic presentment of conflicting human hopes. A play that satisfies these requirements is a good play: any other is a bad one.

But if our critics are apt to hold a wrong standard of the playwright's business, how do they estimate the value of most of our actors and actresses? Is it not a fact that art is at a discount with many of them, and "personal charm" triumphant all along the line? Have we not seen again and again, in these latter days, the heroine of a play-produced in a leading theatre-presented by an actress with little or no experience, and the lady accepted and applauded alike by critics and audience for her beauty's sake? The miserable elocution, ineffective gestures, and unintelligent readings to which London playgoers are growing so accustomed, and which would be hissed into limbo by the humblest of French audiences, go unrebuked if the guilty actor or actress chance also to possess that indefinable something called “ personal charm." Art is nowhere, and a pretty face or a manly bearing is a sufficient qualification for almost any West-end "leading juvenile." The old art and the old faculty of illuminating a character are becoming a mere tradition before the advance of the well-dressed amateur. For such a state of things the dramatic critics are largely to blame. They have not had the manliness to demand that an actor should be an actor, and not a gentlemanly parrot. Evidences of hard study and painful toil are surely as desirable in an actress as bright eyes or a melodious voice. Some of the finest actors on our stage are at this moment almost unknown to the public; scores of personable incompetents breathe an atmosphere of general adulation. Let our critics seek more resolutely for art in the player, and steel themselves more resolutely against cheap cleverness and mere "personal charm," and possibly in a dozen years or so we may be able to boast with more truth than is possible at present, that the English stage is worthy a place beside the French. At present English dramatic art is sick unto death, and the signs of her rejuvenescence attenuated to the dimensions of the mathematical point.

There is a considerable element of perhaps rather obvious truth in this letter. It is not necessary in this connection to take up the glove for " poor dear Ibsen," or to enter into the question whether the sole purpose of a play should be to amuse, or whether it should fulfil any other office. One portion of the writer's case may of course be frankly admitted. It is with the critics that the fortunes of the drama in a great degree rest. But criticism, to be of any service, should be essentially independent. On a question of art. there should be no friendships, no partialities. Friendship is a fine

thing, and many sentimentalities lend a grace to life, but when the matter in hand is the consideration of a new play, or the conduct of a company of players, friendship is out of court, and sentiment irrelevant. There are, it is believed, a few critics, I do not believe that there are many, who frankly profess the practice of flagrant logrolling, who make no secret of their theory of friendship first and criticism second. It needs no demonstration that the principle, however kindly, is altogether wrong. Were a man your heart's brother, if that heart's brother writes a bad play and your business in life call upon you to express an opinion upon that play, you are bound if you think it bad to say so. If the friend is a sensible man he will take an honest opinion in good part; he probably will not agree with it, but he will take it in good part. If he is not a sensible man he will possibly write peevish letters to the papers, and you are well rid of him. What is true of the critic's attitude towards the dramatist is true also of his attitude towards the dramatist's interpreters. Here the critic has even a harder task. For the profession of acting seems to generate a curious kind of arrogance, a pitiable susceptibility, which makes the smallest word of reproof sting like the lash of a bull-whip. All dramatic critics know that there are actors vain enough and silly enough to regard the smallest expression of disapproval of their work as a proof of malignant enmity; whereas, if the ill-graced actor were wise he should only be grateful to the spectator, who has not merely to suffer from his performance, but to be at the pains for conscience sake, of trying to set him right.

Indeed, of late, the joys of the critic have been few. It may be questioned whether even the latest thing in melodrama is more afflicting than a certain kind of revival. "It seemed hard," says a writer who has a way of forestalling my opinion, "to be lured from the March sunlight into a playhouse to see a performance of the Fool's Revenge.' It would not have been altogether a joy to be summoned to witness 'Le Roi s'Amuse,' interpreted by a competent company of players. The machinery of 'Le Roi s'Amuse' seems a little rusty nowadays. It may not be true, as certain advanced French critics would have us believe, that the historical drama is dead, and lapped in lead like King Pandion and his friends, but it is certain that the historical drama moulded in the Victor Hugo manner is better to read than to behold. At least, 'Le Roi s'Amuse' is the work of a man of genius, and might be defended hotly; it would go hard with the most sophistical to say a word in defence of The Fool's Revenge.' It pleased the author of what ought to be

called a parody of 'Le Roi s'Amuse,' to change the venue of the piece. It was quite true that 'the atmosphere of a petty Italian Court of the fifteenth century' was a good atmosphere for a grim story. But this is the atmosphere which the adapter failed to create. His figures are mere meaningless pasteboard puppets, talking intolerable blank verse, and no more characteristic of a petty Italian Court of the fifteenth century, than they are of a calico ball in Camden Town. None of the Italianate terror of Webster gives a throb of life to its tedium; no spirit of irony sharpens its labouring epigram; no clearness of characterisation gives distinction to any scene. The figures are as conventional as the cardboard creatures of a child's theatre, and far less entertaining. Yet when one of these characters, the character of the fool, of Bertuccio, was played by an actor of ability, an actor it might almost be said of genius, like Mr. Edwin Booth, his gifts were great enough to galvanise the doll into something dramatic, into something almost human, into something certainly terrible. But in the hands of the actor, who for some unfathomable reason essayed the part the other day, no such miracle of animation was vouchsafed. He was supported by a company in which a certain number of experienced actors did their best. But it was a sorry business; it made one sigh for that stern order, which in 1832 forbade the production of 'Le Roi s'Amuse.' But our censorship is lenient. It does not interfere with a play because it is badly written or badly acted."

Happily for the playgoer, however, there are good revivals as well as bad revivals. Mr. Irving has interrupted the continuous run of "Becket" in order that he may produce on certain nights certain revivals from his repertory. The first of these has been "Louis XI.," which might with much justice be maintained to be his greatest creation. Those who best understand the scope of Mr. Irving's ability recognise that his genius is best fitted for the higher kinds of melodrama. In looking back over the long years of Mr. Irving's work, in estimating his achievements, in considering his successes and his failures, it will be found that his artistic triumphs-which are of course very different things from his popular triumphs-belong to plays which are of the higher order of melodrama or which, to be more accurate, allow of the higher order of melodramatic acting. These are plays like "The Bells," "The Lyons Mail," "Louis XI.," and "Robert Macaire." Most of these are poor plays enough. "The Bells" and "The Lyons Mail" are tawdry stuff; Casimir Delavigne was not a great dramatist; and the English version of "Robert Macaire" makes the spectator sigh for that rendering by

Mr. W. E. Henley and Mr. R. L. Stevenson which Mr. Beerbohm Tree promised to the world long ago. But each of these pieces is worked with sufficient skill round one conspicuous central figure, and that conspicuous figure is in each case of a kind that allows Mr. Irving to display his natural gifts and the skill of training and experience to their very highest power. In Matthias, in Dubosc, in Loys Onze, in Macaire, the actor has to present various forms of villainy; all the men are crafty, all secret, all dangerous, almost diabolic. To make such characters live and move and thrill requires very rare gifts of expression and of repression. They do not "act themselves," to use the conventional phrase; in the hands of an un. worthy actor they would be laughable or tedious. But in Mr. Irving's hands they become great dramatic creations; they prove that Mr. Irving is at his best a great actor. It has been Mr. Irving's fortune, the fortune of most successful men, to be extravagantly praised, and no less extravagantly abused, and very often he has been most loudly praised where he least deserved it, and most roundly abused where disapproval was undeserved. He has had splendid scenic successes; he has had the inevitable successes of the popular actor; these will not be, should not be remembered. His glories are the triumphs due to his own unaided genius rightly employed, and no better example of such a triumph can be found than his creation of "Louis XI."

JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY.

TABLE TALK.

THE

THE BOOK-STALLS OF PARIS.

HE book-lover who visits Paris is but too well aware of the attractions of a prowl by the Quais on the left bank of the Seine. From the Pont Royal to the Pont Notre Dame stretch, and have stretched for generations, the stalls of the al fresco dealers in old books. Not without difficulty has the right of these dealers to monopolise this space been maintained. Regular booksellers have complained of the competition of those who had no rent to pay, just as the London small shopkeeper complains of the opposition of the costermonger. Jealous and insecure governments feared the dissemination of literature subversive of authority or morals. Once, indeed, under the Second Empire, their banishment was all but decreed, and it is a feather in the cap of that delightful antiquary and book-lover, Bibliophile Jacob, that he made personal application to the Emperor, and obtained for them a further lease of life. Within the last few years their privileges have been extended. Under the present régime any person can address himself to the Préfet de la Seine and obtain, under easy conditions, an allotment of ten yards space, which is the utmost allowed to any individual. As a consequence, the right bank of the Seine is now largely assigned to the book-dealers, who are also permitted to secure and leave the cases containing their books, instead of having, as before, to cart them away every night and return with them every morning.

THESE

PHYSIOLOGY OF THE PARISIAN QUAIS.

HESE bouquinistes, as they are called, have found at length. their historian. Innumerable are the authors and journalists who have referred to them and their occupation, and depicted some aspects of this curious phase of Parisian life. One of the newest, most elegant, and most interesting books that Paris has sent us is the "Physiologie des Quais des Paris" of M. Octave