Upon one occasion Madame Pasta was heard to say: "I would be as
touching as that child in her tears. I should, indeed, be a great
artist if I could imitate her."
Rare, indeed, are the artists who know how to weep. The sublimity of art
responds to nature's simplest impulses. By the study and work of
Delsarte a science has been created, every fleeting sign of emotion has
been fixed, and may be reproduced at will; and this for the instruction
of the artist who may never have observed them in another, nor himself
felt the impressions which give rise to them.
_Application of the Law to Literature._
It is hardly necessary to state that the predominance of one of the
primordial faculties in the actor would necessarily differ from that in
the author of the drama or opera which he would interpret. Literary
capability presupposes more or less of philosophical aptitude and a
predominance of the intellectual faculties, and this not to the
exclusion of a certain amount of artistic and moral development in the
truly great writers. It is in the field of literature especially,
that man attains to a _creation_; and whether his _object_ be a
fellow-creature or an extended and enlarged ideal,--in either and any
case facts have furnished repeated and incontestable evidence, in
support of the statement of Delsarte, that art is always defective
unless it be the product of the three essential modalities of being,
acting in their relative proportions.
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