beyond a certain time, and these are only exaggerations of the "yawning movement." Practicing with a looking-glass, with no fixed rules to guide one, produces the same result, through time. The student gets power over his tongue and throat, but is unable to explain how he produces open throat; neither can his master. The

"yawning movement " has three advantages: (1) It is simple. (2) Its action is easily proved by anyone who tries it in front of a lookingglass. (3) It enables the student of singing to acquire in a few days what used to take weeks to attain. (4) Its efficacy in producing open throat can not be denied.

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CCORDING to the French School of Dramatic Art pantomime is the basis of all stage-effort. It is the fundamental principle of the education of the artist in portraying nature. Hence, all the great actors of the French stage who have come over to this country have made use of this skill in making the face and the hands tell what is meant without words. The men and women who practice the dramatic art in Paris never get above pantomime, but in America, for some reason unexplained, this necessary branch has always been considered suitable only for children. Christmas plays for the little ones, in pantomime, after the English custom, were fashionable for a time, but even these fell into disuse and lost patronage as soon as the fad wore itself out. The American on the stage and off seems to think that he can tell his story better with blunt words than by any gestures.

Not so with the Gaul. One can see that he uses gestures instead of words in the ordinary conversation of everyday life. The significant shrug of the shoulder and spreading of the hands mean something to him. His fellow-Gaul understands, but the American does not. On the stage this custom is carried to the extreme. Even the great Bernhardt commenced her stage-career as a Pierrot, a pantomime boy. None of her predecessors or successors has succeeded

on the stage of France without this schooling. Pantomime tells the whole story, or is a very useful adjunct. The teaching of this branch of the art is in itself no inconsiderable part of the duty of the teacher, and to see a fair exponent of the art in its completeness is a rare treat in practical America.

Mlle. Pilar-Morin, whose production of "Orange Blossoms was so much discussed in New York a few months ago, is one of the best-known exponents of the possibilities of pantomime. She is Spanish by birth, and, although educated in France, has been unable to disguise the fact that she is from south of the Pyrenees. Her gesturing is modeled on the French school, but there is also an originality in motion which comes only to the Castilian.

"I found, when I came to America," she said, "that Americans knew nothing of pantomime. Over in France that is the first thing that is taught. It is as much a part of the business as the matter of costuming. There the actress who hopes to make a hit must be able in her beginning to tell the whole story of the play without one word, simply by gesture and by pose, before she is permitted to speak a line. When she can do this she takes speakingparts, but uses her skill in pantomime to increase the truthfulness of her performances. Bernhardt was a Pierrot or moon boy, long before

not

she ever attempted to do anything more ambitious. If she was skilled in gesture and in pose, she would not be able to tell a story to those countries where her language is not spoken. Yet she does this. Americans rave over her performances, when the fact is that not one in a hundred understands what she says. Her acting, her gestures and her poses tell the story without language. Of course, she speaks, but if the language is not known what does it convey to the mind? Nothing. Her acting, therefore, and not her words, tell you what she is doing, and the whole story is made clear by this means.

"One of the first things I teach when schooling an artist for this line is that she has two hands and two feet, and that she should be able to use both. It may sound queer, but it is a fact, that most persons have no control of the left hand or foot. Why? Because in ordinary life one is enough. All the gestures and motions are made with one side. That is, a person will become accustomed to using one hand for nearly everything, subordinating the other to it. This is usually the right hand. Then, when I tell the scholar to make a gesture with the left hand she always says at first that she can not, and asks me to change the 'business' so that she can use the other. I will not do this, for if she is to succeed she must have complete control of both. In pantomime the first work is to teach the student that gestures must be made in circles. That is the Pierrot. He is a moon boy and everything is round to him. When the student can make graceful circles with both hands and feet and blend the whole body with them, then she is ready to go on to the more intricate work.

"It would astonish you to know how awkward a person can be by nature and how this may be dis

guised. It would astonish you to see a successful actress off the stage and see how nature has slighted her. She may have broad, coarse hands, but if she is an artist, she never lets her audience see this. Her gesturing disguises the defects. We learn to bend each of our fingers so that only the beautiful lines in the hand are shown. The palm should never be shown to the audience, for it is the least attractive portion of the hand. The gesture which calls for the display of the palm should be so turned that when it ends, the back and only a portion of that is shown, while all five of the fingers are visible. This is art, and is easy when learned, but difficult to one not schooled.

"In pantomime, which, by the way, in France is the highest art, the whole body is made responsive to the slightest thought. The tale is told by the motions of the body, the motions of the hand, and the expression of the face. The motions

are

soon acquired, but it takes a great deal of hard work to school the features to express the unfamiliar sentiments. When it comes to mirth, anybody can express that, but when it comes to the portrayal of grief, anger, jealousy, etc., then it takes an artist to tell the audience just what is meant. If the actress can not do this, what is the value of spoken lines? They tell the story, but if a jealous woman confides her woes to the audience with a smiling countenance or a stolid face, does the speech help? Not a bit. It makes the whole thing ridiculous.

"When one has mastered the art of making hands and feet and body tell what is meant as far as these can do so, then the real work of the pantomimist begins. Of course, I would not think of teaching facial expression to a person who did not know what her hands are for. No matter if she has the most mobile and ex

pressive features in the world, if she stumbles over her own foot or blunders in the awkward style of the girl who has just discovered that she is a woman, and, consequently, does not know why she is on earth, she can not be trusted to portray feeling by her face. She must find out that she is a composite being and that every portion of her body is responsive to some other portion, and that the entirety can be made to do whatever the mind demands.

"Do we read the lines of a play put in pantomime? Yes. In every case we must learn the story from the spoken lines, and we must be letter perfect, too; for everything is told to the strains of topical music, and each performer must occupy only his or her music. You see, if there is a break in the lines, owing to bad memory, there is no ready speech improvised to cover the defect. The whole story may be spoiled by one person's lack of memory or inattention to study. We say the lines in our minds and act them, but never emit a word. This is more difficult than it appears. One can not judge of the difficulty of repeating lines in the mind, giving the appropriate action, and still controlling the voice and the lips so that neither may give it away. takes great fortitude and skill.

This

"While it is true that Americans do not teach pantomime as a fundamental portion of the dramatic art, it is also true that American artists are giving more and more attention to business where nothing is said. For instance, it is quite frequent in the modern plays to have the hero or the heroine go through five or ten minutes' business in one or more acts of the play without saying a word. The acting is the thing. The story is continued without language, the pose, facial expression, gesture, setting, etc., telling what is told in silence. America is advancing in this regard rapidly, but I think that more progress would be made, if the schools of dramatic art would commence the student's education with pantomime.

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Pantomime in itself would not pay in America at present, for the people are not educated to that style of play. But it would become more popular and in the end be a distinct part of the business, if the young players were first taught the value of telling a story without words. I give a sketch now where there are no words, and it has been very successful. The people seem to enjoy this kind of thing, and I see no reason why more ambitious performances might not be winners."

HEN in our march through

WH

literature we weary of the metaphysical meanderings of Browning and the Preraphaelitism of the Rossetti school, when we have followed the speculations of the WardGrand-Nordau schools, and have wrestled with the dialect veneer of Watson and Kipling, it is with something akin to a sigh of relief that we sweep them all aside and turn to the airiness and grace of Austin Dobson's poetry. The school of which Mr. Dobson is a disciple is a continuation of or a development from that inaugurated by William Mackworth Praed in England in the early part of this century. The followers of this school were known as writers of society verse-vers de société-made up of epigrammatic couplets, teeming with sly satirical shafts and quiet, effervescent humor. Six poets-three living and three deadhave, during the century, gained recognition as able exponents of the possibilities of this style of composition. William M. Praed, Mortimer Collins, and Charles Stuart Calverley are the dead; Frederick Locker, Ashby Sterry, and Austin Dobson are still living. Of these names the first, the third and the last are best known on this side of the Atlantic. As to which of these three shall be acknowledged the head, opinion is much divided, but a consensus of the competent pronounces Austin Dobson the master of society verse.

The generality of society rhymsters are like pyrotechnic displaysbrilliant and short-lived. They cross our path, we halt in momentary ad

miration, and then pass on and quickly forget their existence. Not so with Mr. Dobson. His style is so distinctive, so varied, so tasteful and so pungent, that we never tire of reading and of rereading him. The great secret of Mr. Dobson's lasting popularity lies in his variety,— variety of subject and variety of expression. He draws his material from all directions; now from 18th century France, now from 18th century England, now from modern times; then again his muse courses to Greece and to the East. Here his theme is expressed in a ballade or a quaint fable, there in a strictly society dialogue, and in another place in stanzas of such seriousness and pathos that some critics have felt warranted in contesting his right to the name of a writer of vers de société par excellence, the essential element of which is gaiety and humor.

In an indirect way Edmund Clar ence Stedman is responsible for part of Mr. Dobson's success, for it was he who sounded the note of warning to Mr. Dobson, in his criticism of "Vignettes in Rhyme," in 1875. He said: "Such a poet, to hold the hearts he has won, not only must maintain his quality, but strive to vary his style; because, while there is no work, brightly and originally done, which secures a welcome so instant as that accorded to his charming verse, there is none to which the public ear becomes so quickly wonted, and none from which the world so lightly turns upon the arrival of a new favorite with a different note." Mr. Dobson was clever enough in

stantly to recognize the justice and the value of this suggestion, with the result above referred to.

Henry Austin Dobson comes of a race of civil engineers, and is of French descent on the paternal side. His grandfather, while on an engineering tour in France, was married to a native of that country. Their son, however,-George Clarisse Dobson, also a civil engineer-returned to England and settled at Plymouth, where, on January 18, 1840, young Austin was born. His education, begun at Beaumaris, a little Welsh town of a few thousand inhabitants, was continued at Coventry, in Warwickshire, and still later in France. and in Germany. When he was sixteen years old, he returned to England from Strasburg, Germany, with the avowed intention of making the third generation of civil engineers. It was decided, however, that he enter the Civil Service-that Briarean system that appropriates so many English authors-and he accepted a clerkship in the London Board of Trade. He has been connected with it ever since, and consequently his life has been busy, but uneventful. His position is now that of a Principal, with offices in Whitehall Gardens, within a stone's throw of those of Andrew Lang, the poet and essayist.

Mr. Dobson is not one of those poets who have "lisped in numbers" from the time that they could toddle; for, strange to say, it was not until he had passed the quarter century mark that he began to write verse. When Anthony Trollope founded his magazine-St. Paul's-in 1868, Mr. Dobson was one of its first contributors. His rhymes, signed simply "A. D.," immediately attracted attention by their daintiness and humor. Between 1868 and 1874 nearly fifty of his best pieces, including "Une Marquise," "Tu Quoque," "An Autumn Idyll," "Avice," and

It

"A Song to Angiola in Heaven," were printed in Trollope's journal. In 1873 his first book of verse, "Vignettes in Rhyme and Vers de Société," made its appearance. was dedicated to Anthony Trollope and consisted of a selection from his St. Paul's contributions, together with much new material. "Proverbs in Porcelain " followed in 1877, and "Old World Idylls," the best pieces in the first two volumes, in 1883. In 1880 an American edition of his poems, drawn from the "Vignettes and the "Proverbs," was published, with a grateful dedication to Oliver Wendell Holmes. "At the Sign of the Lyre," dedicated to his best critic, E. C. Stedman, was given to the public in 1885. Other editions of his poems have appeared later, from time to time, but they are largely selections from his first volumes, with little, if any, new matter. Mr. Dobson has also contributed to the best literary magazines of the day both in England and in America; viz., Temple Bar, Cornhill, Longman's, Blackwood's, Scribner's, the Century, Harper's, etc.

Mr. Dobson has not confined his efforts entirely to poetry, but has entered the dominion of prose composition with much success. His biographies of the worthies of the 18th century are models of literary style and are written with his usual gracefulness and accuracy. His most notable prose productions are: "Eighteenth Century Vignettes;" "Four French Women;" and the lives of Hogarth (1879), contributed to" Biographies of Great Artists," of Fielding (1883) in "English Men of Letters," of Steele (1886) in "English Worthies," and of Thomas Berwick and his pupils (1884) in the Century. He has also written the critical notices of Prior, Praed, Gray, and Hood, in "Ward's English Poets" and a memoir of Horace Walpole (1890), and has edited "Eight