MR. IRVING ON HIS PROFESSION.

Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 68, 17 September 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

MR. IRVING ON HIS PROFESSION.

The editor of The Young Man, a little monthly paper, publishes a letter received from Mr. Irving on the subject of young men and the drama. Mr. Irving writes; — "I would say, first, that the stage represents one of the most powerful instincts in human nature — the instinct of drama, which can be satisfied only by the living embodiment of dramatic conception in the theatre. Secondly, the stage, being undeniably an institution which you cannot destroy, should commend itself to all reasonable people as an instrument of judicious recreation and as au educatioual influence. There is no difference in principle between studying human nature in the theatre aud studying it in the pages of fiction, and when I am told that there are evil influences in the drama, and that this or that entertainment is immoral, I can only say that there are a good many novels which are injurious to morals, but that their existence is no reason why the young should not read Scott, Thackeray, George Eliot, and Dickens. A liberal education, in my opinion, does not lay an absolute bar upon an entire profession, simply because that profession is not more perfect than auy other. A young man who is educated according to a truly enlightened method will learn to discriminate betweeu good and ill, and not to interdict a great art merely because an occasional phase of it may offend his moral standard."