simulative art, it is impossible to expect him always to feel the passion he portrays with the same intensity; but he must have conceived at the beginning their effects, or he never could have conveyed their expression to his audience. The great danger, however, of trusting to art and not to true inspiration is that after a time the representation becomes rigid and cold: this was the determining cause of the deterioration in Rachel's genius towards the end of her career, the soul had gone out of her impersonations; instead of being instinct with life, they became hard and formal. She felt this herself when she said to her sister Sarah on her death-bed, "In studying, take my word for it, declamation and gesture are of little avail. You have to think to weep."
These three years of suffering and obloquy were also three years of energetic and unintermittent study. Amidst all the instability and excitable restlessness of her nature, Rachel had the persistence of purpose which is the test of true genius. Once she felt assured of her capacity to act a part, no influence deterred her from doing so—no exterior inducement was allowed to interfere with her calm determination to master the subject. Intense as was the emotion she felt, she set about the work with mechanical steadiness, using the emotion as a tool to be made use of when needed.
This fragile young girl had an iron will when she wished to rise to the level of an exalted ideal. She was one of the most remarkable examples of natural genius that ever existed, but, at the same time, an example of how hard-working genius ever is. There was no hesitation, no faltering; the more difficult was the rôle of Phèdre, the more indefatigably she worked at it. Not
