the actor can steel himself to no such fortitude. He can lodge no
appeal to posterity. The owls must hoot, the cuckoos cry, the apes
yell, and the dogs bark on his side, or he is undone. This is of
course inevitable, but it is an unfortunate condition of an artist's
life.

Again, no record of his art survives to tell his tale or account for
his fame. When old gentlemen wax garrulous over actors dead and gone,
young gentlemen grow somnolent. Chippendale the cabinet-maker is more
potent than Garrick the actor. The vivacity of the latter no longer
charms (save in Boswell); the chairs of the former still render rest
impossible in a hundred homes.

This, perhaps, is why no man of lofty genius or character has ever
condescended to remain an actor. His lot pressed heavily even on so
mercurial a trifler as David Garrick, who has given utterance to the
feeling in lines as good perhaps as any ever written by a successful
player:

'The painter's dead, yet still he charms the eye,
While England lives his fame shall never die;
But he who struts his hour upon the stage
Can scarce protract his fame thro' half an age;
Nor pen nor pencil can the actor save--
Both art and artist have one common grave.'

But the case must be carried farther than this, for the mere fact that
a particular pursuit does not hold out any peculiar attractions for
soaring spirits will not justify us in calling that pursuit bad names.
I therefore proceed to say that the very act of acting, _i. e._,