These speeches will address themselves to the minds and hearts of
those who read them, but not with the effect they had with those
who heard them; Clemens himself would have said, not with half the
effect. I have noted elsewhere how he always held that the actor
doubled the value of the author's words; and he was a great actor
as well as a great author. He was a most consummate actor, with
this difference from other actors, that he was the first to know
the thoughts and invent the fancies to which his voice and action
gave the color of life. Representation is the art of other actors;
his art was creative as well as representative; it was nothing at
second hand. I never heard Clemens speak when I thought he quite
failed; some burst or spurt redeemed him when he seemed flagging
short of the goal, and, whoever else was in the running, he came in
ahead. His near-failures were the error of a rare trust to the
spontaneity in which other speakers confide, or are believed to
confide, when they are on their feet. He knew that from the
beginning of oratory the orator's spontaneity was for the silence
and solitude of the closet where he mused his words to an imagined
audience; that this was the use of orators from Demosthenes and
Cicero up and down. He studied every word and syllable, and
memorized them by a system of mnemonics peculiar to himself,
consisting of an arbitrary arrangement of things on a table-knives,
forks, salt-cellars; inkstands, pens, boxes, or whatever was at
hand-which stood for points and clauses and climaxes, and were at
once indelible diction and constant suggestion. He studied every
tone and every gesture, and he forecast the result with the real
audience from its result with that imagined audience. Therefore, it
was beautiful to see him and to hear him; he rejoiced in the
pleasure he gave and the blows of surprise which he dealt; and
because he had his end in mind, he knew when to stop. I have been
talking of his method and manner; the matter the reader has here
before him; and it is good matter, glad, honest, kind, just. W. D.
HOWELLS.
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