to his temperament, his cast of mind, his turn of thought; each talks as he is: and that which is pleasing in a chat is precisely the discovery in it of the physiognomy of the talker. I can give you only one piece of advice on this point: try to be, through art, when once seated in the lecturer's chair, that which you naturally are in your drawing-room, when you talk with five or six persons and when you engross the conversation. Hear yourself speak, observe yourself, these introspections are become very easy to us, thanks to the habit that we have contracted of analyzing ourselves, and bend all your efforts to producing a lecture, not according to your neighbor, who perhaps speaks better than you, but yourself, only yourself, accentuating if possible the rendering of your principal traits. I will condense my counsels in this formula, which is not so humorous as it seems: It is permitted you, it is even recommended to you, to have a "make-up” for the lecture; but the "make-up" must be your own.

Your entire personality must shine forth in your discourse. And that is the especial service rendered by this method of successive improvisations that I have just prescribed for you. While you are thus improvising alone, face to face with yourself, without any witness to inspire you with a desire to pose, you are free; you unconsciously set your entire being in full swing. The mold is taken; you spread your personality before the public; you are no longer a more or less eloquent, more or less affected orator, you are a man; you are yourself.

To be one's self: that is the essential thing.

Among the young lecturers discovered in these later times, there is not one who has more quickly acquired a greater or more legitimate reputation than M. Brunetière. Nevertheless there is not one further removed in speaking from the ordinary tone of familiar conversation. It would seem that the lecture, as he practices it, would hardly come within the definition we have given of the species, a conversation with an audience that holds. its tongue. But what would you have? That is the way that

Brunetière talks, and he talks as he is. He is a man of doctrine, who loves to dogmatize; he feels an invincible need of demonstrating that which he advances, and to force conviction on those who hear him. He manœuvres his battalions of arguments with a precision of logic and an ardor of temperament that are marvelous. The phrases fall from his authoritative lips with an amplitude, correctness, and force to which everything XXII-803

bends. He is to be found entire in his lecture: the lecture is excellent, then, because it is of him; or rather, because it is he. Old Boileau had already expressed these truths in some verses that are not among his best known:

"Chacun pris dans son air est agréable en soi;

Ce n'est que l'air d'autrui qui peut déplaire en moi.” *

If I should try to talk like Brunetière, I should be execrable: it is possible, on the other hand, that if Brunetière tried to appropriate some of my methods he would not succeed; because, to tell the truth, my air of good-fellowship, my familiarities of language, my jovial anecdotes interspersed with frank laughter, my unpolished and torrent-like phrases, are not methods, they are all of a piece with myself; it is all I-a little more I perhaps than I ordinarily am, but Brunetière is also probably a little more himself in his lecture than in his chimney-corner at home.

May I be permitted to end these reflections on the art of the lecturer with some practical advice?

Never dine before the lecture hour. A soup, some biscuits dipped in Bordeaux, nothing more. If you fear gnawing at the stomach, add a slice of roast beef, but without bread. Do not fill the stomach. There is a rage in the provinces for inviting you to a gala dinner when you have a lecture to give. It's the worst of all preludes. It is in vain to try to restrain yourself. You eat and you drink too much; you arrive at the lecture hall chatting with the dinner company. You have infinite trouble in recovering yourself.

Dine lightly and alone an hour beforehand; stretch yourself for half an hour on a sofa, and take a good nap. Then go, entirely alone, to where you are expected, improvising, reimprovising, pondering upon your exordium, so that when the curtain rises you are in perfect working order; you are in form. I do not know how the political orators manage to deliver their long discourses after gala banquets. It is true that they generally do not dine. I have seen some who all during the repast abstractedly roll balls of bread under their fingers, and only respond vaguely with insignificant monosyllables to the tiresome talk of their neighbors.

*((
"Every one taken in his own manner is pleasing in himself;
It is only another's manner that is displeasing in me."

Speak standing: one commands a fuller and stronger voice, but especially the audience is dominated; you hold it with your eye. Speak from behind a table, even though (according to the rules that I have laid down) you have no notes to read, no quotation to make, book in hand. One is sustained by the table, and brought around to the conversational tone. If one has before him the wide space of the platform, in proportion as one warms up he makes more motions, he surprises himself striding across the stage; the voice rises, and is soon no longer in harmony with the level of the things that are to be delivered. Beware of these balks. Watch the play of your physiognomy and your gestures, but not too much. I leave mine to the grace of God; what is natural, even though it be exuberant and trivial, is worth more than a factitious and studied correctness.

Have I other recommendations to make? No, I truly believe that I am at the end of my list. All the rest can be put into one sentence: "Be yourself." It is understood, is it not, that it is necessary first to be some one? You now know the processes which I have used, which I still use.

FURTHER HINTS ON LECTURING

From 'Recollections of Middle Life.' Copyright 1893, by Charles Scribner's

You

Sons

ou have to speak, we will suppose, of 'Le Cid' by Corneille. Do not weary yourself at first by reading all that has been written on 'Le Cid': steep yourself in the play, think of it, turn it over and over, go to see it if it is being played: if neither the reading nor the representation of the drama suggests to you any impression that is properly yours-good gracious, my friend! what would you have me say? Don't meddle with lecturing either on 'Le Cid' or any other theme drawn from literature. Manifestly you are not born for the trade.

But if you have shuddered and thrilled at a given passage; if there has been presented to your mind some comparison that has, so to speak, sprung from the depths of your reading; if you have yourself formed an opinion upon the whole or upon some scenes of the work, you must cling to that: it is that which must be told, it is that which I call having something to say.

Do not trouble yourself to know if others have thought it before you, and have said it perhaps even better than you will say it yourself. That is not the question. The idea, however old it may be, will appear new; and will be so, indeed, because you will strongly impress upon it the turn of your mind, because you will tinge it unconsciously with the colors of your imagination.

As you will have made it flash from the reading, as you will yourself have drawn this truth from its well, your passion will go out to it, you will naturally put into its expression a good faith, a sincerity, a transport, the heat of which will be communicated to the public.

Not until you have performed this first task, the only necessary one, the only efficacious one, shall I permit you-pay atten tion: permit you, not advise you to read what your predecessors have thought of 'Le Cid,' and written about it. If by chance. you run across some interesting point of view that had escaped you, and that strikes you, take care, for the love of heaven, not to transfer it just as it is to your lecture, where it would have the mischievous effect of second-hand and veneer. No: take up 'Le Cid' anew; re-read it with this idea, suggested by another, in mind; put that back into the text in order to draw it out yourself, rethink it, make it something of your own; forget the turn and the form given it by Sainte-Beuve, from whom it first came to your notice. If you cannot succeed in taking possession of it, in melting it so well in the crucible of your mind that it will be no longer distinguished from the matter in fusion which is already bubbling there, better discard it, however pleasing, however ingenious it may be:

Be assured there will be nothing good in your lecture but what you shall have thought for yourself; and what you shall have thought for yourself will always have a certain seal of originality. You have thought that Chimène sacrifices her love to her duty, that Rodrigue is a hero boiling over with love and youth, that Don Diègue is an epic Gascon. Do not embarrass yourself with scruples, and repeat to yourself in a whisper, “But every one has said that."

Every one has said it! So much the better, because there is some chance that your audience will be enchanted, seeing you plunged up to your ears in the truth. But every one has not said it as you will say it; for you will say it as you have thought it, and you have thought it yourself.

JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL

(1826-1886)

SUCCESS So splendid and so sustained as that which has attended 'Ekkehard' and the Trumpeter of Säkkingen,' has not before been witnessed in the history of German literature. It is safe to regard as final an emphatic popular verdict, which has not only stood unreversed but has annually been reaffirmed in the course of nearly half a century. The Trumpeter' was published in 1854, 'Ekkehard' in the following year; in 1895 the former reached its two hundred and sixteenth edition, the latter passed its one hundred and forty-third. This great and growing demand is the plébiscite of two generations; and the decision of this high court of appeal has gone in favor of Scheffel's claim to a poet's immortality.

Joseph Victor von Scheffel was born at Karlsruhe on February 16th, 1826; and there, sixty years afterward, he died on April 9th. He was another example of the young man of many capabilities who fails at first to find the right one. His father was an engineer, and the son's talent for drawing was inherited; the poetic gift came from his mother, who, besides other works, had written a drama which was produced at the court theatre of Karlsruhe. But young Scheffel, through the persistence of his parents, was forced to study law and prepare himself for the career of a government official. After taking his degree he held several public positions, and practiced law at Säkkingen.

J. V. VON SCHEFFEL

During the six years which he spent in this uncongenial employment it was his ardent desire to become a painter. At last in 1852 he abandoned his profession, and went to Rome. Fortunately, however, his friends and his own failures soon made it clear to him that he had mistaken the direction of his genius; and the man who three years later had completed the most popular German poem and the most popular German novel of the century, retired to Capri in the depths of despondency because he could not paint.

During the winter at Capri and Sorrento, he sought to comfort himself in his disappointment by shaping the memories of his Rhine