and
unaffecting a manner, that I am afraid of not being believed when I
affirm it." Elsewhere, in his Apology, when contrasting the creator with
the interpreter, the original delineator with the actual impersonator
of character, the same old stage gossip remarks, how men would read
Shakspere with higher rapture could they but conceive how he was played
by Betterton! "Then might they know," he exclaims, with a delightful
extravagance of emphasis and quaint-ness of phraseology, "the one was
born alone to speak what the other only knew to write!" The simple truth
of the matter being that for the making of a consummate actor, reader,
or impersonator, not only is there required, to begin with, a certain
histrionic instinct or dramatic aptitude, but a combination--very rarely
to be met with, indeed--of personal gifts, of physical peculiarities,
of vocal and facial, nay, of subtly and yet instantly appreciable
characteristics. Referring merely to those who are skilled as
conversationalists, Sir Richard Steele remarks, very justly, in the
_Spectator_ (No. 521), that, "In relations, the force of the expression
lies very often more in the look, the tone of voice, or the gesture,
than in the words themselves, which, being repeated in any other manner
by the undiscerning, bear a very different interpretation from their
original meaning." Whatever is said as to all that is requisite in the
delivery of an oration by the master of all oratory, applies with equal
distinctness to those who are readers or actors professionally. All
depends on the countenance, is the _dictum_ of Cicero,{*} and even in
that, he says, the eyes bear sovereign sway.

* De Oratore iii., 59.

Elsewhere, in his great treatise, referring to what was all-essential
in oratorical delivery, according to Demosthenes, Tully, by a bold and
luminous phrase, declares Action to be, as it were, the speech of
the body,--"quasi sermo corporis." Voice, eyes, bearing, gesture,
countenance, each in turn, all of them together, are to the spoken
words, or, rather than that, it should be said, to the thoughts and
emotions of which those articulate sounds are but the winged symbols,
as to the barbed and feathered arrows are the bowstring. How
essential every external of this kind is, as affording some medium of
communication between a speaker and his auditors, may be illustrated
upon the instant by the rough and ready argument of the _reductio ad
absurdum_. Without insisting,