Page:Scottishartrevie01unse.djvu/347

Rh ' But naethiiig stranger than niysel' I 've seen — it is the truth I tell — An' naething strange to me befell Thae twenty years. But whaurfore dee ye ride the nicht ? I ken — nor winner at yere fricht ; But ye '11 be safe — an' I '11 be richt, Sae calm yere fears. ' An' sae, guidnian, at break o' day Gang to the tree on yonder brae — The leafless aik, wi' branches grey — Aneath its stem Dig deep, till four gray groats ye see Then to the priest the glives' price gie Wha cuist his malison on me — Noo, there's yere hame.' ' Wae 's me ! I 've waited lang an' sair- Thae twice ten dreary years an' mair — For sic a tryste by Dennilair : — Joy gars me greet : — For weel I ken yere loon's first cry Will brak the spells that o' me lie ; Then to the dead I 'II creep in-by, 'Neath gowans sweet. Nae mail', when a' is husht and still Save win's low sabbin' on the hill. Or tinklin' flow o' stream an' rill Ghaists noiseless stray ; Weird Dennilair is weird nae mair; The ghaist is laid, an' flow'ries fair Bloom ower his grave, an' scent the air Baith nicht an' day. ' The haly kirk, it cursed me thrice : A pair o' glives, three groats the price. Was a' I stole — they waurna nice, Gey waur o' wear ; An aye sin syne wi' troubled breast I 've wanner'd here a restless ghaist, Forsaken, shunned, unloved, unblest. Year efter year. Oh, bonnie are the braes o' Gight ! When simmer days are lang an' bricht I 'd lie upo' them day and nicht Nor dream o' care. But listen to the sang o' birds The flow o' streams, an' low o' herds ; A book o' music wantin' words Is Dennilair !

T may or may not have been the optics of the market-place that constrained Mr. Archer to give the suasive title of Masks or Faces ? to his conscientious and scholarlike study' of 'The Psychology of Acting'; but it is due to him to say that his second title would not by itself be an overweening label for his book. It is really fitted, as he partly claims, to make an end of a somewhat long-drawn controversy, of which the subject-matter is indeed no more trivial than that of any other inquiry into the workings of the human mind, but which tended to seem somewhat frivolous by reason of the manner, and the hands, in which it was carried on. In recent years actors and others have been discussing with more zest than science the problem, raised in England by a translation of Diderot's Faradoxe siir le Comcdicii, whether the moving actor is really moved by his part ; some authoritatively saying yes ; others, of equal authority, saying no ; and what is so fatally common in the discussions of the most methodic Jisychologists — entanglement of terms — inevitably took place in the dialectic of artists and amateurs who, however intelligent, could not be fully alive to the innate treacherousness of words. More than half the battle,

^ Masks or Fafc's ? a Study in the Psychology of Actings by William Archer. London ; Longmans, Green, & Co. in this as in so many other issues, is purely verbal. What Mr. Archer has done is to proceed in the proper scientific fashion to collect evidence, and to test by that evidence the competing theories ; thus at least minimising the risk of mere verbal confusion, and throwing so much light on the grounds of strife as to make it easier than before for everybody to judge the merits of the case. He has perhaps established no new facts of the first importance ; but he has arranged new and old facts in an order which quickens and guides induction to the best purpose.

His inquiry was first sketched, most readers will remember, in a set of articles in Longman's Magazine, in which were published the series of questions addressed by him to English actors, and his redaction of a number of the replies. The completed book, however, is a much more exhaustive study ; and has a special literary value as supplying an account of the antecedents of Diderot's Parado.vc — the drift of previous French and English ci'iticism on the subject of the actor's art, and among other details the curious history of a French treatise adapted by an English translator, and re-adapted from the English by a French writer who did not know the original. For the rest, Mr. Archer adheres to what seemed to some of us his