utiful simile to the image of queen-like
refinement, soft womanhood, and spiritualised intellect that this
wonderful actress presented--"as if an angel dropped down from the
clouds." Her Portia was stately, yet fascinating; a woman to inspire awe
and yet to captivate every heart. Nearer to Shakespeare's meaning than
that no actress can ever go. The large, rich, superb manner never
invalidated the gentle blandishments of her sex. The repressed ardour,
the glowing suspense, the beautiful modesty and candour with which she
awaited the decision of the casket scene, showed her to be indeed all
woman, and worthy of a true man's love. Here was no paltering of a puny
nature with great feelings and a great experience. And never in our day
has the poetry of Shakespeare fallen from human lips in a strain of such
melody--with such teeming freedom of felicitous delivery and such dulcet
purity of diction.

XII.

JOHN McCULLOUGH IN SEVERAL CHARACTERS.

There is no greater gratification to the intellect than the sense of
power and completeness in itself or the perception of power and
completeness in others. Those attributes were in John McCullough's
acting and were at the heart of its charm. His repertory consisted of
thirty characters, but probably the most imposing and affecting of his
embodiments was Virginius. The massive grandeur of adequacy in that
performance was a great excellence. The rugged, weather-beaten plainness
of it was full of authority and did not in the least detract from its
poetic purity and ideal grace. The simplicity of it was like the lovely
innocence that shines through the ingenuous eyes of childhood, while its
majesty was like the sheen of white marble in the sunlight. It was a
very high, serious, noble work; yet,--although, to his immeasurable
credit, the actor never tried to apply a "natural" treatment to
artificial conditions or to speak blank verse in a colloquial
manner,--it was made sweetly human by a delicate play of humour in the
earlier scenes, and by a deep glow of paternal tenderness that suffused
every part of it and created an almost painful sense of sincerity.
Common life was not made commonplace life by McCullough, nor blank verse
depressed to the level of prose. The intention to be real--the intention
to love, suffer, feel, act, defend, and avenge, as a man of actual life
would do--was obvious enough, through its harmonious fulfilment; yet the
realism was shorn of all triteness, all