FLEXIBILITY OF ART 95 of pathos in the humorous adroitness with which he converted sentiment into jocularity and made sobriety ludicrous, while by the peculiar felicity of his inflections he gave pointed comic effect to every verbal quip. No actor known to me has surpassed him,—few have equalled him,—in the faculty, which is a rare one, of eliciting and conveying the humorous significance of a word, a broken sentence, or a mere exclamation. His animal spirits, also, in Don Cæsar,-and in many other characters,-were singularly infectious. His treatment of the somewhat inflexible part of Young Marlowe provided an instructive and delightful example of the animating quality of his humor and the dexterity of his impersonative art. The text of the dialogue in "She Stoops to Conquer" is often rigidly formal; the colloquies in which Marlowe participates are verbally stiff. Wallack made the language dulcet, and he vitalized, with his convincing pretence of absolute sincerity, every situation in which that puzzled youth is placed. Affluent and sustained vitality of spirit is essential to make steadily interesting a comedy in which the situations are mostly incredible and some of the incidents farcical. That vitality Wallack supplied. Bluff assurance, airy nonchalance, entirely persuasive and exceedingly comic bashfulness, gallantry, and amiability were the constituents of the impersonation, and the fibre of it was gentility. In character, manners, and costume the person presented as Marlowe was a typical young English squire, a knight's son, of Goldsmith's period. He had abundant reason to be proud of that achievement. Alfred Evelyn, in "Money," should also be named as another formally written part that he greatly enlivened in his presentment of it, not sacrificing its mordant quality, but suffusing it with latent feeling, and making it sympathetic and lovable. In reading the novels of Jane Austen I have made pleasing acquaintance with several peculiar men,-drawn with all the sagacity of observation and delicate skill of that wonderfully fine literary artist,-which, had they been in dramatic form, Lester Wallack would have SIR OSWIN MORTLAND 97 made actual and absorbingly interesting. He would also have discriminated with precision between the two brothers named Moore who are so well contrasted in Charlotte Brontë's novel of "Shirley." His sense of character was particularly acute. There is a kind of man, indigenous to an old civilization, certainly anomalous in a new one, in whom tender sentiment and the fire of youth are half-extinct, yet existent, smouldering, beneath a half-melancholy, half-bitter aversion to the world. Such a man is portrayed by Mrs. Inchbald, in Sir Oswin Mortland, and I remember Wallack's personation of that part as perfect. The theme is the awakening and rejuvenation of a fastidious, almost ascetic recluse, under the influence of an innocent, ingenuous, lovely young woman. Description of the comedian's slow transition from petulant discontent and stern reserve to bewilderment, perplexity, and ultimate sweet surrender could not reproduce the charm of the acting or convey an adequate idea of its blended traits of humor, romance, pathos, and truth. To see and understand Lester Wallack as Sir Oswin Mortland and as Don Felix was completely to comprehend the art of acting comedy. WALLACK'S LETTERS TO ME. It was in 1880 that I collected and edited, with a memoir of the author, "The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O'Brien" (cir. 18281862), and the volume was published, in Boston, by James R. Osgood & Company, in 1881. O'Brien had been a great favorite with the elder and the younger Wallack, and I sent a copy of the book to Lester, which he acknowledged in the following letter. "Dear Willy: "13, West Thirtieth Street, "Knowing my great fondness for O'Brien, it was like your thoughtful kindness to send me the book. You have wrestled with a great difficulty with wonderful tact, and brought order out of 'a mixture of material' which a less delicate and experienced touch might have utterly failed to elicit. "I tried hard to find a cheery, plucky little note, in pencil, which he wrote to my father after he was |