“Even kings but play, and when their part is done, Some other, worse or better, mount the throne.” As we cannot be monarchs, says the Porpora of fiction, we are artists, and have a kingdom of our own: we dress ourselves as kings and great men, we ascend the stage, we seat ourselves upon a fictitious throne, we play a farce, we are actors. The world, he continues, sees us, but understands us not. “It is only when I am at the theatre that I see clearly our true relations to society. The spirit of music unseals my eyes, and I see behind the footlights a true court, real heroes, lofty inspirations; while the wretched dolts who flaunt in the boxes upon velvet couches are the real actors. In truth, the world is a comedy; and we must play our parts in it with gravity and decorum, though conscious of the hollow pageant which compasses us on every side.” And Godolphin pronounces life to differ from the play only in this—that it has no plot, all being vague, desultory, unconnected, till the curtain drops with the mystery unsolved. All this is in Mr. Carlyle’s vein—of the _Sartor Resartus_ date at least; or as when he depicted the family vagaries of Mirabeaudom, which produced “such astonishing comico-tragical French farces”—with the eight chaotic volumes of family correspondence, wherein the various personages speak their dialogue, unfold their farce-tragedy: “Seen or half seen, it is a stage; as the whole world is. What with personages, what with destinies, no stranger house-drama [than that of the Mirabeau family] was enacting on the earth at that time.” The same figure Mr. Carlyle elsewhere applies to our own revolution times, in the century before: “Such is the drama of life, seen in Baillie of Kilwinning; a thing of multifarious tragic and epic meanings, then as now. A many-voiced tragedy and epos, yet with broad-based comic and grotesque accompaniments, done by actors _not_ in buskins;—ever replete with elements of guilt and remorse, of pity, instruction, and fear.” * * * * * ACT WELL YOUR PART:—there all the _moral_ lies. Though the world _be_ histrionical, and most men live ironically, says Sir Thomas Browne, “yet be thou what thou singly art, and personate only thyself.” It has been sadly and severely said of the Emperor Augustus, who was loved by no one, that if, at the moment of his death, he desired his friends to dismiss him from this world by the common expression of scenical applause (_vos plaudite!_), in that valedictory injunction he expressed inadvertently the true value of his own long life, which, in strict candour, may be pronounced one continued series of histrionic efforts, and of excellent acting, adapted to selfish ends. _L’honnête homme_, writes an epigrammatic thinker, _joue son rôle le mieux qu’il peut sans songer à la galerie_.