o. It's a part of your general
training. You may do without that of course--without culture and taste
and perception; but in that case you'll be nothing but a vulgar
_cabotine_, and nothing will be of any consequence." He had a theory
that the great lyric poets--he induced her to read, and recite as well,
long passages of Wordsworth and Swinburne--would teach her many of the
secrets of the large utterance, the mysteries of rhythm, the
communicableness of style, the latent music of the language and the art
of "composing" copious speeches and of retaining her stores of free
breath. He held in perfect sincerity that there was a general sense of
things, things of the mind, which would be of the highest importance to
her and to which it was by good fortune just in his power to contribute.
She would do better in proportion as she had more knowledge--even
knowledge that might superficially show but a remote connexion with her
business. The actor's talent was essentially a gift, a thing by itself,
implanted, instinctive, accidental, equally unconnected with intellect
and with virtue--Sherringham was completely of that opinion; but it
struck him as no _betise_ to believe at the same time that
intellect--leaving virtue for the moment out of the question--might be
brought into fruitful relation with it. It would be a bigger thing if a
better mind were projected upon it--projected without sacrificing the
mind. So he lent his young friend books she never read--she was on
almost irreconcilable terms with the printed page save for spouting
it--and in the long summer days, when he had leisure, took her to the
Louvre to admire the great works of painting and sculpture. Here, as on
all occasions, he was struck with the queer jumble of her taste, her
mixture of intelligence and puerility. He saw she never read what he
gave her, though she sometimes would shamelessly have liked him to
suppose so; but in the presence of famous pictures and statues she had
remarkable flashes of perception. She felt these things, she liked them,
though it was always because she had an idea she could use them. The
belief was often presumptuous, but it showed what an eye she had to her
business. "I could look just like that if I tried." "That's the dress I
mean to wear when I do Portia." Such were the observations apt to drop
from her under the suggestion of antique marbles or when she stood
before a Titian or a Bronzino.

When she uttered them, and many others