ritics have made the very natural error of confounding
magnetism with personality. These words have quite different
connotations--personality comprehending the more subtle force of
magnetism. An artist's individual worth is very closely allied with his
personality--that is, his whole extrinsic attitude toward the thought
and action of the world about him. How important personality is may be
judged by the widely advertised efforts of the manufacturers of
piano-playing machines to convince the public that their products, often
astonishingly fine, do actually reproduce the individual effects which
come from the playing of the living artist. Piano-playing machines have
their place, and it is an important one. However, wonderful as they may
be, they can never be anything but machines. They bring unquestioned joy
to thousands, and they act as missionaries for both music and the
music-teacher by taking the art into countless homes where it might
otherwise never have penetrated, thus creating the foundation for a
strong desire for a thorough study of music. The piano-playing machine
may easily boast of a mechanism as wonderful as that of a Liszt, a
d'Albert or a Bachaus, but it can no more claim personality than the
typewriter upon which this article is being written can claim to
reproduce the individuality which characterizes the handwriting of
myriads of different persons. Personality, then, is the virtuoso's one
great unassailable stronghold. It is personality that makes us want to
hear a half dozen different renderings of a single Beethoven sonata by a
half dozen different pianists. Each has the charm and flavor of the
interpreter.

But personality in its relation to art has been so exquisitely defined
by the inimitable British essayist, A. C. Benson, that we can do no
better than to quote his words:

"I have lately come to perceive that the one thing which gives value to
any piece of art, whether it be book, or picture, or music, is that
subtle and evasive thing which is called personality. No amount of
labor, of zest, even of accomplishment, can make up for the absence of
this quality. It must be an almost instinctive thing, I believe. Of
course, the mere presence of personality in a work of art is not
sufficient, because the personality revealed may be lacking in charm;
and charm, again, is an instinctive thing. No artist can set out to
capture charm; he will toil all the night and take nothing; but what
every artist c