, but I should call her a great artist. Marie Tempest
is not versatile, unless she should be so designated for having made
equal successes on the lyric and dramatic stages, but she is one of
the most satisfying artists at present appearing before our public.
Mallarme was not versatile; Cezanne was not versatile; nor was Thomas
Love Peacock. Mascagni, assuredly, is not versatile. The da Vincis and
Wagners are rare figures in the history of creative art just as the
Nijinskys and Rachels are rare in the history of interpretative art.

Someone may say that the great actor dies while the play goes
thundering on through the ages on the stage and in everyman's library.
This very point, indeed, is made by Mr. Lewes. But this, alas, is the
reverse of the truth. We have competent and immensely absorbing
records of the lives and art of David Garrick, Mrs. Siddons, Ristori,
Clairon, Rachel, Charlotte Cushman, Edwin Booth, and other prominent
players, while most of the plays in which they appeared are not only
no longer actable, but also no longer readable. The brothers de
Goncourt, for example, wrote an account of Clairon which is a book of
the first interest, while I defy any one to get through two pages of
most of the fustian she was compelled to act! The reason for this is
very easily formulated. Great acting is human and universal. It is
eternal in its appeal and its memory is easily kept alive while
playwrighting is largely a matter of fashion, and appeals to the mob
of men and women who never read and who are more interested in police
news than they are in poetry. George Broadhurst or Henry Bernstein or
Arthur Wing Pinero, or others like them, have always been the popular
playwrights; a few names like Sophocles, Terence, Moliere,
Shakespeare, and Ibsen come rolling down to us, but they are precious
and few.

A great actor, indeed, can put life into perfectly wooden material. In
the case of Sarah Bernhardt, who was the creator, the actress or
Sardou? In the case of Henry Irving, who was the creator, the actor or
the authors of _The Bells_ and _Faust_ (not, in this instance,
Goethe)? Is Langdon Mitchell's version of "Vanity Fair" sufficiently
a work of art to exist without the co-operation of Mrs. Fiske? When
Duse electrified her audiences in such plays as _The Second Mrs.
Tanqueray_ and _Fedora_, were the dramatists responsible for the
effect? Arthur Symons says of her in the latter play, "A great
actress, who is also a grea