"No, no," she said; "keep all the fire you can; only let it be seen and felt by all the audience. But if you trust on each representation to the fiery impulse of the moment, you will sometimes find it glow too much, and sometimes it will probably be hidden in smoke. The genius feels the passion and grandeur of a great Shaksperian creation, perhaps as entirely as Shakspeare himself, but it is only the artist who can place it before others. A poet could see the Venus of Canova in a block of marble, but it was the hammer and chisel of the sculptor which gave it its immortal form. I feel with regard to this very Ophelia that I know every phase of her character; that I can identify myself with her disappointments and sorrows; but the chances are, after the identity is established, that I end by making Ophelia into Miss Claribel, and not Miss Claribel into Ophelia." "No, for you speak Shakspeare's language in Ophelia's situation, and with Ophelia's feelings." "But with Miss Claribel's lips, and shakings of the voice, and tears in the eyes, which arise from the depths of Miss Claribel's nature; and, in fact, I now feel convinced that, in order to succeed on the stage, a flexibility of character that enables one to enter into the minutest sentiments of the personage of the drama, is by no means required, but only such a general conception of the character as preserves the Shaksperian heroine from the individualities of her representative; and gives to an intelligent pit, the spectacle not of a real, living, breathing woman, born of father and mother, but of a being of a more etherial nature--human, yet not substantial--divine, yet full of weakness--the creation of a splendid imagination, and not the growth of mortal years, or supported by 'human nature's daily food.'" My mother went on with her knitting in a most hurried and persevering manner--a habit she indulged in whenever she was puzzled. I might have followed her example if I had had the knitting needles in my hand, for I did not see the drift of these perplexing observations. Miss Claribel saw our bewilderment, and translated her dark passages into ordinary prose by saying that her oration had been a lecture against mannerism, or the display of the individualities of an actor instead of a clear development of the character represented. "It was also a theory," she added with a smile, "that mannerism often arises from a too close appropriation of a character, which makes a performer assimilate it with his own." "From all which I conclude," I said, with a mortified air, "that in spite of black bugles and silk stockings, I shall still be Mr Charles de Bohun, and not Hamlet, prince of Denmark."