or enchantment. I have not always liked Mrs. Patrick Campbell's enterprises; I find upon reflection that I like Militza better than most of them. Much as I liked her Paula Tanqueray, I did not know how much I liked it until I saw the part attempted in another country and by another hand. Much as I disliked her Dulcie Larondie, I grew, if not to like it, at least to long for it, when I saw what another actress's impression of Dulcie Larondie could lead to. Mrs. Patrick Campbell has, and one is glad to learn it, admirers whose zeal of admiration is only rivalled by their ability to express it. Mr. Bernard Shaw is a champion who can voice a rapture that almost needs a ritual, with the fervour of the fanatic, and yet with the composure of the critic. I have not at hand some radiant sentences in a recent Saturday Review, but as I remember them the author of "Arms and the Man" declared-reshaping for her the immortal phrase of Steele's-that to see Mrs. Patrick Campbell on the stage was all the recompense a playgoer deserved or need desire. This gallantry is not all phrase, not merely lyrism, not only what Marcel called "du style." The actress who can rouse such enthusiasm, whose personality can cause so sharp and so persistent a sense of pleasure, cannot at least be commonplace. I do not think that Mrs. Patrick Campbell has yet proved herself to be a great actressMilitza could scarcely, perhaps, permit her player to prove anything of the kind; and yet her Militza has impressed me and attracted me as nothing else that she has done-always and obviously excepting Paula Tanqueray-has impressed me or attracted me. And the attraction deepens with reseeing. Militza's eyes seem to grow more mysterious, Militza's voice more wistful, every time; a spectator, no longer indifferent, wishes for some better part, some better play, wherewith to test at once all the beliefs and doubts that the actress has quickened to leave unconfirmed or unanswered.

Yet, after all, Mr. Forbes Robertson's playing is the pith of the business, the heart of the whole Lyceum adventure. No one with any concern for the interests of the stage can have failed for this many a year to wonder why an actor of so much ability, of so much intelligence, a man who seemed so markedly an artist in an art that is not always served by artists, did not bulk more largely in the public view, did not assert his existence and his gifts more strenuously, even more defiantly. The years came and the years went, and they found Mr. Forbes Robertson playing many parts, and for the most part playing them well, but never, as it seemed, at least to some, playing quite the parts or holding quite the position that his excellence deserved. Once he played Romeo, and played it well

nigh beyond praise, but the splendour of this dawn was followed by a leaden noon. Through a long succession of varied interpretations the memory recalls with delight the Buckingham of "Henry VIII.," a creation which made that revival memorable, and reminded many, who were perhaps beginning to forget it, that Mr. Forbes Robertson might be the great romantic, if not the great tragic, actor of his time. Now, at last, but happily not too late, he has done what it has amazed many that he has not done before: he has taken command of a company of players; the dramatic instrument is in his hands; he has it in his power to sound what stops he pleases, and to test fully and decisively the warm convictions, the earnest beliefs, of his admirers. He has not yet, perhaps, made the most of his opportunity. In beginning his campaign with "Romeo and Juliet" he fought against two disadvantages-against the memory of his own earlier Romeo on the one hand, and on the other against the keen curiosity about the Juliet of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, a curiosity which gave way to a war of clashing opinions whose noise and fury turned the thoughts of the public somewhat away from Romeo. Of "Michael and his Lost Angel" it were no gain to speak. Whatever the reasons were which led to the regrettable withdrawal of a remarkable, daring, and brilliant play, it may be admitted that Mr. Forbes Robertson did not seem wholly at his ease in the part, and that even in doing his best, he did not succeed in showing himself at his best. I do not think he succeeds in showing himself at his best, for that matter, in the part of Constantine Brancomir. The part is not good enough, is too half-hearted, too spiritless, too weak of execution, too feeble of conception to serve Mr. Forbes Robertson the best turn in the world. Everything he does must interest; most things he does must charm; and so his Constantine Brancomir has its interest and its charm. But, so far, the new management at the Lyceum has in the main afforded opportunities to two actresses, and though this is admirable, perhaps what we most wish to learn from the experiment is how far Mr. Forbes Robertson can go. That he can go further than he goes in "For the Crown" it would be absurd to doubt.

I have left myself little time or space in which to praise with a heart and a half a piece to which, as to Lady Blessington's hand, justice has not been done. "Shamus O'Brien" at the Opéra Comique is a delightful piece of work. It is not my business to speak of its music, but Scribe and Wagner remind me that the book is an important part of an opera. The book of "Shamus O'Brien " is excellent, and the acting is worthy of the book. Out of Sheridan Lefanu's stirring poem the dramatist has constructed a spirited,

picturesque, poetic play, which follows with an agreeable but not an obsequious deference on the lines of Boucicault's Irish dramas. And the acting is admirable. For the Shamus O'Brien of Mr. Dennis O'Sullivan, as for the gallant English officer of Mr. William Stephens, one has only Mr. Pinero's pet formula of praise, praise, praise. But undoubtedly the best acting in the piece-and to say this is to say much-is that of Miss Maggie Davis; acting at once so fresh, so gracious, so dainty, and so absolutely right that I am at once amazed and rejoiced to learn that she is new to the stage. Mr. Joseph O'Mara is not new to the stage, but his presentation of the informer is one of the finest, the most masterly studies in the tragi-comic or the comically tragic that I have ever seen.

The newest play, as I write, upon the London stage is "Monsieur de Paris," the one-act piece that precedes "The Chili Widow" at the Royalty Theatre. The play itself it is best to ignore. Few people know much about the servants of the guillotine in the days when the guillotine was yet a novelty. The authors of "Monsieur de Paris" do not appear to be included in that minority. But Miss Violet Vanbrugh played what she had to play with a passion and a pathos, a power and earnestness that cried aloud for a better play to deserve them. Miss Violet Vanbrugh is a delightful comedian : is she determined to wear both the masks and prove herself a tragedian too?

JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY.

TABLE TALK.

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MR. SIDNEY LEE ON NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY.

R. SIDNEY LEE, the editor of the "Dictionary of National Biography," the most important and responsible literary undertaking purely national in character that this or, perhaps, any other country has undertaken, has reprinted in pamphlet form a lecture upon National Biography delivered at the Royal Institution on January 31, and first printed for general circulation in a magazine. As the head of national biographers, Mr. Lee is entitled to speak "to the city and the world." His lecture consists in part of counsel to those by whom he is served or aided. It has, however, a wider application. A memorial to one who deserves well of the State and his countrymen should be, Mr. Lee says, with a cunning employment of alliteration, "permanent, public, and perspicuous," the last word signifying in a shape that leaves no doubt as to the nature of the achievements or characteristics it is sought to commemorate. The best way of securing these things, the "best drug that can serve as an antidote against the opium of time," is a written biography. "The safest way," says Thomas Fuller, quoted by Mr. Lee, "to secure a memory from oblivion is by committing the same to writing.” But feeble in comparison is "storied urn or animated bust." Pyramids, mausoleums, statues, and columns fail to satisfy all the conditions of permanence. Those, even, who reside in Pittsburgh, or ride in a brougham, or even who wear Wellington boots, forget that the name glorifies an eminent statesman, lawyer, or warrior. The cases, even, in which elegiac poetry, such as Shelley's "Adonais," Tennyson's "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," and Wolfe's "Burial of Sir John Moore," have immortalised an individual, are few. Biographies, such as those of Plutarch, are the most abiding of all memorials of departed greatness. "Tacitus's 'Life of Agricola' has outlasted Agricola's mausoleum.” National biography, meantime, if it is to be permanent, differs in toto from biography as ordinarily understood and practised. Chance, caprice, or a score other causes work, so that we see a Life of Thomas More in eight volumes which

might well, if written at all, have been compressed into one. It is but justice to Mr. Lee to say that he is not responsible for this and other illustrations, which spring out of what he says, but are not in every case said by him.

F

THE FUNCTIONS OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY.

ROM the view of Froude that the function of the national biographer is adequately discharged by the national historian, Mr. Lee rightly dissents. Wholly different from the field covered by the one is that occupied by the other. "The historian's purpose," Mr. Lee eloquently and appropriately says, is often served if he catch a shadowy glimpse, or no glimpse at all, of personages who command the biographer's most earnest attention. Among those

who make no conspicuous figure in history, Mr. Lee advances Dr. Johnson, Benvenuto Cellini, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Samuel Pepys. He might, indeed, almost have included Chaucer and Shakespeare. Something approaching censure is passed upon Froude for his seeming neglect to recognise "the existence of biography as an independent department of literature." Froude's judgment upon Mary Tudor might have been corrected had he turned to the "Life of Queen Mary," by Miss Strickland, a writer who fills "a very humble niche in the temple of biographic art." Into the questions with which Mr. Lee most specially deals-the conditions under which national biography best fulfils its purpose-I cannot enter. Not easy is it, indeed, to compress into space shorter than Mr. Lee has occupied all that requires to be said upon the subject. Fortunately, Mr. Lee's paper is generally accessible, and is, even by now, well known.

I

A SUGGESTION FOR NATIONAL BIOGRAPHERS.

AM, however, disposed to hint at a means by which future national biographies, naturally of other countries, may be run on lines less costly and, so to speak, less imperial. Where great biographies almost always break down is in regard of cost. A remarkable instance of this is furnished by the "Nouvelle Biographie Générale" of Firmin Didot, where the first half of the alphabet is finished in Vol. xxxvii., and the rest of the alphabet is comprised in nine volumes more. My own plan will probably be dismissed as silly, and it is, indeed, as I shall show, open to attack. In a case such as the present, where one wealthy and public-spirited firm will bear the cost,