True art is never merely an imitation of nature, nor is it ever purely creative; but it is partly both. It arises from the desire to convert conceptions into perceptions, to objectify the subjective in order to enhance and prolong it in order to revive it at will and impart it to others. Art, Delsarte said, with his matchless precision of phrase, is feeling passed through thought and fixed in form. Grace without force is the product of weakness or decay, and can please none save those whose sensibilities are drained. Force without grace is like presenting a figure skinned or flayed, and must shock every one who has taste. But grace in force and force in grace, combined impetuosity and moderation, power revealed hinting a far mightier power reserved,—this is what irresistibly charms all. This is what only the very fewest ever attain to in a superlative degree; for it requires not only richness of soul and spontaneous instinct, and not only analytic study and systematic drill, but all these added to patience and delicacy and energy. The elements of the art of acting are the applied elements of the science of human nature; yet on the stage those elements are different from what they are in life in this respect, that there they are set in relief,— that is, so systematized and pronounced as to give them distinct prominence. That is precisely the difference of art from nature. It heightens effect by the convergence of co-operative agencies. For instance, when the variations of the speech exactly correspond with the changes of the face, how the effect of each is heightened! Aaron Hill said of Barton Booth that the blind might have seen him in his voice and the deaf have heard him in his visage. Of those in whom nature is equal he who has the greater art will carry the day, as of those in whom art is equal he who has more nature must win. A lady said, “Had I been Juliet to Garrick’s Romeo, so ardent and impassioned was he, I should have expected that he would come up to me in the balcony; but had I been Juliet to Barry’s Romeo, so tender, so eloquent and seductive was he, that I should certainly have gone down to him.” In these two great actors nature and art contended which was stronger. Very different was it with Macready and Kean, of whom it used to be said respectively, “We go to see Macready in Othello, but we go to see Othello in Kean.” The latter himself enjoyed, and delighted others by showing, a transcript of the great world of mankind in the little world of his heart. The former,— “Whate’er the part in which his cast was laid, Self still, like oil, upon the surface played.”