24 AUGUST 1867, Page 16

ART.

MR. T. TAYLOR ON ACTING.

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]

Sin,—I venture to ask space in the Spectator for a letter in which I have taken the liberty of excepting to a criticism of Miss Terry's Beatrice in the Pall Mall Gazette. The editor of the Gazette, to whom I addressed the letter, thought, and probably with reason, that criticism of his critic's judgment would be out of place in the Gazette itself. I ask you to insert it, because I have found in your columns the most appreciative judgments of the young actress in question. I send the letter under my own name, because I am glad to record, thus personally, my strong admiration of her acting, now that it is on the point of becoming a thing to look back upon, a theme for the theatrical reminiscences of the landator temporis acts, as the acting of Miss O'Neill is now to our seniors.

1 am not prejudiced enough to think that the cause of good art on the stage is bound up with any one actor or set of actors ; but I cannot help feeling that the estimation of Miss Terry's art does, in some sense, involve a choice between two schools of acting, to describe which I might borrow a phrase from the Pall Mall's criticism of Miss Terry's Pauline, and call the one "the oil-colour," and the other the " water-colour" school, but which I should myself describe as " the strong" and " deli- cate" style respectively. Most English acting that has won favour is of the former kind. In inferior hands this style passes into coarse exaggeration ; and it is in this form we usually see it, modified by all shades of affectation, artificiality and excess. Miss Terry's acting is the most complete illustration I have seen of the latter style. In inferior examples this degenerates into weak-

ness and insipidity, but it seems to me that in the case of Miss Terry we have an example, unique at present, of exactly the right combination of force and delicacy for her clasia of parts, — the youthful heroines of grave, gay, or mixed drama.

So far from thinking that Miss Terry hiss been set too high, or admired beyond her deserts; I do not think she has obtained enough recognition of the right kind—enough, I mean, of that careful analytical. appreciation which her performances warrant. She has been abundantly praised, in the indiscriminate way in which most of the newspaper critics lavish their approba- tion or their censure; but she has not been judged as she deserves, except by a small minority of her critics. Chief among these judges I rank the theatrical critics of the Spectator; not because they have generally "praised" Miss Terry, but because they have

always" " appreciated " her.—I am, Sir, &c., TON TAYLOR.