GROWTH AND FRESHNESS OF PROFESSIONAL GLORY: INVIDIOUS
ATTACKS AND THEIR CAUSES.

The next marked division in the biography of Forrest covers the period between his twenty-first and his twenty-eighth year, from the close of his first engagement at the Bowery in 1827 to his departure for Europe in 1834. No other actor ever lived who at so early an age achieved a series of popular successes so steady, so brilliant, so extensive as those which filled these seven triumphant and happy years. They yet remain unparalleled. It was undoubtedly the most fortunate and the most enjoyed period of all in his long career. His health and vigor were superb, his faculties joyously unfolding, his senses in their keenest edge, his glory spreading on all sides, money pouring into his purse, the general love and praise lavished on him scarcely as yet broken by the dissenting voices or alloyed by the signals of envy. His name was emblazoned in the chief cities all over the land, the press teemed with kindly notices, his performances were attended nightly by enthusiastic crowds, who applauded him to the very echoes that applauded again.

In his social relations,—the secondary domain of life,—he saw his desires flatteringly gratified in an increasing degree, his goings and comings announced like those of a king, the eyes of the throng turned after him wherever he went, his thoughts and passions taking electric effect on the excited crowds who gathered to gaze on his playing, choice friends suing for his leisure hours. The common estimate of him and the popular feeling towards him are accurately reflected in the sonnet addressed to him at this time by his friend Prosper M. Wetmore:

And in the primary domain of life—his own physique—he was blessed with a basis of favorable conditions quite as rare. His clean-sinewed frame so firmly poised in its weighty centres, his rich flood of blood copiously nourishing the seats of function, his generous intelligence and his native fearlessness of temper, were the ground of a gigantic complacency in himself which was equally pleasurable to him and attractive to others so long as he intuitively experienced rather than consciously asserted it. He was vaguely aware, in an uncritical way, that his sphere was heavier than those of the men he met, that the elemental rhythms of his being were larger, that the gravitation of his personal force overswayed theirs. While this was indicated by nature without his knowledge, it made him interesting, a sort of magnet to which others swayed in loyal curiosity or affection. And such was entirely the case up to this time. His frank, fresh nature was as yet unwrung by injustice, malignity, and falsehood, unspoiled either by souring adverses or sickening satieties. He was a wholesome specimen of a man of the unperverted, untechnical human type, to whom, in his personal harmony and power, with his loving and trusted friends and his progressive grasping of the prizes of the great social struggle, the experience of each day as it came and went was a cup of nectar which he quaffed without a question, finding neither guilt at the top nor remorse at the bottom.

But he had sufficient force and height of character not to yield himself up to selfish indulgence. Notwithstanding the flattery bestowed on him, he felt the defects in his education, and determined to remedy them as well as he could. He knew that he needed the polish of literary and social culture and the training of critical studies alike to supplement the advantages and to neutralize the disadvantages of the coarse and boisterous scenes—the bold and lawless styles of men—amidst which much of his life in the West and South had been passed. Accordingly, when the opportunity was given him for a choice of associates, he took for his intimate friends in New York a very different class from those he had affiliated with in New Orleans. Without at all losing his taste for manly sports or shunning the company of their votaries, his preferred friends were men of literary and artistic tastes, of the highest refinement and the best social rank. A large number of accomplished persons, like Leggett, Bryant, Wetmore, Halleck, Inman, Ingraham, Dunlap, Lawson, were in those years on affectionate terms with him as his avowed admirers. From their example, their conversation, their criticism, he profited much. He became a liberal buyer of books, and soon had an excellent library, which he used faithfully, devoting a large portion of his leisure to reading. Nor did he read idly. He read as a student, reflecting on what he read, striving to improve his mind and taste by knowledge in general, as well as to pierce more deeply into the philosophy of the dramatic art in particular. He made himself familiar with the history of plastic and pictorial art, with engravings of celebrated statues and paintings, carefully noting their most impressive attitudes and groupings. He also explored the history of costume in the principal countries, classic, mediÆval, and modern. The habit of reading and meditating which he formed at this time was fostered by many influences, grew stronger with his years, spread over wide provinces of biography, poetry, philosophy, and science, and was to the very last the chief solace and ornament of his existence.

While thus devoting himself with new zeal to mental culture, he did not forego one whit of his old assiduity in exercises for the furtherance of his bodily development. During his second year in New York he took a series of lessons in boxing. He felt a great interest in this art, became a redoubtable proficient in its practice, and was ever an earnest and open admirer of its prominent heroes. Those who feel this to be discreditable to him will find on reflection, if they think fairly, that it was, on the contrary, a credit to him. Multitudes of refined people have an intense admiration for superlative developments of physical beauty, force, and courage, though they conceal their taste because by the standards of a squeamish politeness it is considered something low and coarse. But Forrest always scorned that style of public opinion, defied it, and frankly lived out what he thought and felt. At the time of the famous fight between Heenan and Sayers for the belt of world-championship, it was clear that scholars, poets, statesmen, divines, and even fashionable women, felt the keenest interest in the contest. They read the details with avidity, and talked of them with the liveliest eagerness. The fascination is nothing to be ashamed of, but rather to be cultivated with pride. To a just perception, the fighting is not attractive, but repulsive and dreadful. It is the strength, grace, discipline, smiling fearlessness, superb hardihood, connected with the struggle, the rare exaltation of the most fundamental qualities of a kingly nature, that evoke admiration. Surely it is better to be a perfect animal than an imperfect one. When all things are in harmony, the finest corporeal condition is the basis for the highest spiritual power. A champion in finished training, with his perfected form, his marble skin, clear unflinching eyes, corky tread, and indomitable pluck, is a thrilling sight. When the crowd see him, their enthusiasm vents itself in a shout of delight. His mauling his adversary into a disfigured mass of jelly is indeed frightful and loathsome; but that is a base perversion, not the proper fruition, of his high estate. The functional power of his bearing is magnificent. He is in a condition of godlike potency. It is a higher thing to admire this glorious wealth of force, ease, and courage than to despise it. Personal gifts of strength, skill, fearlessness, are certainly desirable on any level in preference to the corresponding defects. To turn away from them with disgust is a morbid weakness, not a proof of fine superiority. While in this world we cannot escape the physical level of our constitution, however much we may build above it. Is it not plainly best as far as possible to perfect ourselves on every level of our nature? An Admirable Crichton, able to surpass everybody on all the successive heights of human accomplishments, from fencing with swords to fencing with wits, from dancing to dialectics, cannot be held, except by a mawkish judgment, as inferior to a Kirke White writing verses of pale piety while dying of consumption brought on by over-stimulus of literary ambition.

Forrest had pretty thoroughly practised gymnastics, the exercises of the military drill, horsemanship, and fencing, each of which has a particular efficacy in developing and economizing power, by harmonizing the nervous system, if the will does not interpose too much resistance to the flow of the rhythmical vibrations through the muscles. He now felt that there was a special virtue in the mastery of boxing; and to avail himself of it he secured the services of George Hernizer, a distinguished professor of the manly art, a man of immense strength, great experience, and not a little moral dignity. Supreme mastership, in whatever province it be achieved, even though it be in the mere ranges of physical force and prowess, gives its possessor an assured feeling of competency and superiority, which has an intrinsic moral value and reflects itself through him in some quiet lustre of repose and security. It is those whose equilibrium is most unstable who are the most irritable and resentful. It is weakness and insecurity that make one fretful and quarrelsome. Shakspeare says it is good to have a giant's strength, but tyrannous to use it like a giant. We know that the more gigantic the resources of a man the less tempted he is to put them forth. It is ever your weakling who is naturally waspish.

Before putting on the gloves with his pupil for the first time, Hernizer sat down with him and talked with him for half an hour in a wise and kindly manner on the morality of the art, or the true spirit in which it should be approached. He summed up in terse maxims the principles which ought to govern all who practise it, and enforced them with apt illustrations. He warned him especially never to lose his temper, and never to presume on the advantages of his skill to strike any man unnecessarily. He said that every boxer who had the instincts of a gentleman was made more generous and forbearing by his safeguard of reserved power. Forrest, eager to be at the work, and scarcely appreciating the propriety or value of the lecture, listened to it impatiently at the time, but remembered it with profit and gratitude all his life. As he recalled the circumstances and lingered over the narrative forty years later, a light of retrospective fondness played in his eyes, and his tongue seemed laved and lambent with love.

When he had taken lessons for about six months, one day when his nervous centres were aching with fulness of power, as he was sparring with his teacher, a sort of good-natured berserker rage came over him. The ancestral instincts of love of battle burned in his muscles, and he longed to pitch into the strife in right down sincerity. "Come, now, Hernizer," he cried, "let us try it for once in real earnest." "Pshaw! no, no!" replied the master, parrying him off. But waxing warmer and warmer in the play he pressed hard on him, putting in the licks so hot and heavy that at last Hernizer, rallying on his resources, fetched him a blow fair between the eyes that made him see stars and sent him reeling against the wall. "I have got enough!" exclaimed Forrest, with a laugh, as soon as he could collect himself, and went and threw his arms around his teacher; and the two athletes stood in a smiling embrace, their naked breasts clasped together, and the great waves of warm blood mantling through them. Such a passage would have made untrained and nervous men angry or sullen, but it only made these giants laugh with pleasure and sharpened their fellowship. However, Forrest said, he never again asked Hernizer to buckle to it in earnest.

Forrest did not inherit that herculean poise of power which for half a century made him such a massive mark of popular admiration. He attained it by training. And herein he is a splendid example to his countrymen, thousands on thousands of whom, in their whining debility, dyspeptic pallor, and fidgety activity, need nothing else so much as a thorough physical regimen to replenish their blood, soothe their exasperated nerves, and give a solid equilibrium to their energies. The Greeks and Romans, the nobles and knights of the Middle Age, were wiser than we in securing a superb physical basis for human perfection. Men like Plato, Pericles, Æschylus, Sophocles, were foremost in the palÆstra as well as in the lists of mind. There never was another time or land in which the excited suspicions and emulations of society tended so terribly as in our own to fret and haggardize men and prematurely break them down and wear them out. Our incessant reading, our excessive brain-work, cloys the memory, impoverishes the heart, wearies the soul, and destroys the capacity for relishing simple natural enjoyments. This is one of the morals which the biography of Forrest ought to emphasize by the brilliant contrast it exhibits. For he at thirty, the period when laborious Americans begin to give out, had developed an organism of extraordinary power, with cleanly-freed joints and firmly-knit fibres and a copiously-stocked reservoir of vitality. With an unfailing digestion which quickly assimilated the nutriment from what he ate, effort slowly tired, rest rapidly restored him. As he himself once expressed it, the engine was strong and there was always plenty of fire under the boiler. He therefore felt no need of stimulation; and this, no doubt, was one of his safeguards against that insidious temptation to intemperance to which so many members of his profession, from the exhausting nature of its irregular exertions, are fatally exposed. A full force of vitality transfuses the elastic frame with an electric consciousness of pleasure and wealth. It is the ready power to do anything we like within the limits of our nature, just as a rich man feels that he can buy this, that, or the other thing at any moment if he wishes. In contrast with the drooping, tremulous man, overtasked and drained, startled at each sound, shrinking from the thought of effort, crossing the street to avoid the trial of accosting an acquaintance, afflicted with lingering pains by the slightest injury, there is nothing so inexhaustibly fascinating as an exuberant vigor of life in the senses, easily shedding annoyances, quickly healing hurts, ready at every turn for transmutation into any form of the universal good.

The effect of an artistic drill resolutely applied is something which very few persons appreciate. Faithfully practised, its power is surprising. Most observers, instead of recognizing its steady accumulation of gains, attribute the startling result to exceptional genius. Artistic drill for super-eminent excellence in any personal accomplishment has a moral value no less than a physical service but little understood. It lifts one above the multitude in that particular and gives him distinction. It thus fosters self-respect and puts him at work with greater zeal and assurance. It is thus a moral basis of inspiration and contentment. The drill of the horseman, the sportsman, the boxer, the soldier, the dancer, the singer, the orator, has an effect quite distinct from and superior to that of labor or exercise. Labor or exercise is straggling, broken, fitful; but drill is regular, symmetric, rhythmical, and has an influence to refine and exalt by economizing and directing the forces of the organism while enhancing them. It is a discipline of art. In its final completeness, corporeal and mental, it gives one an easy confidence, a feeling of competency, which is a great luxury. It enables one to stand up before his fellow-men with free chest and alert spirit and look straight in their eyes without blenching and perform his tasks without flurry. This was Forrest. He attained this deliberate self-possession, this mastery of his resources, in a degree which cannot be ascribed to one actor out of ten thousand, to one man out of a million.

A brief account of his first appearance in Boston will give an idea of the experience which he enjoyed in those years, in constant repetition, as his fresh engagements led him over the land from city to city.

"Boston, February 7th, 1827.

"My dear Mother,—Sunday evening I arrived, after a tedious and wearisome journey, at the place which is called the literary emporium of the Western hemisphere, and on Monday evening, for the first time in my life, made my bow to the good people of Massachusetts. I was received with acclamations of delight, and the curtain fell amidst repeated and enthusiastic testimonials of gratification and approval.

"Here, mother, I must break off awhile; for Mr. Fisher, a Quaker preacher, has just stepped in to see me. He was one of my fellow-passengers hither in the stage-coach; and as he is a very agreeable man, possessing much mind, I have a disposition to treat him with deference and respect.

"Evening, 11 o'clock.

"I have just returned from performing William Tell. The house was crowded, and the applause generous. I am charmed with the Boston people. They are both liberal and refined. In this place I shall add much to my reputation, as well as enlarge my purse, and at present this latter is as necessary and will be as acceptable as the former.

"Why does not brother William write me oftener than he does? Did you receive the $100 I sent you?

"All court, every attention, is paid me here by the young men of first respectability. These truly flattering attentions make me hold you, beloved mother, dearer than ever before. I trust I shall not live in vain, but hold my course a little longer, that I may restore you to peace and competency and reflect a mellow light upon the evening of your declining day.

"With sincerest love for sisters and brother, I am yours till death.

"Edwin Forrest."

It was on the opening night of this engagement, February 5th, 1827, in the old Federal Street Theatre, in the character of Damon, that Forrest was seen for the first time by James Oakes, who was destined to be his most intimate and devoted friend from that hour unto the close of earth. After the play Oakes went behind the scenes and obtained an introduction, his heart yet shaking from his eyes the watery signals of the profound emotion awakened in him by the performance. The new acquaintance was cemented by a long and happy conversation in the room of the actor, though neither of them could then have dreamed how momentous a part it was to bear henceforth in the lives of both. They flowed harmoniously together as if they had been foreordained for each other by being set to the same rhythm. Forrest was a little less than twenty-one, Oakes a little less than twenty years old at that time. They were as alert and sinewy, as free and pleasureful, as a couple of bounding stags, and the world lay all before them in roselight. Ah, what a tinge of pensive wonder, what a shade of mournful omen, would have dropped on the bright sentiment of that exuberant season if they could have foreseen all to the end,—the tragic sorrows and deaths of so many of their friends, leaving these two to journey on, clinging the closer the more others fell away!

A little over four months after his brilliant success in Boston, he appeared, under circumstances less auspicious, in the capital of Rhode Island, and had a short but ominous illness, which he described in a letter to his mother.

"Providence, 20th June, 1827.

"Dear Mother,—I performed for the first time under the immediate patronage of Providence on Friday evening last. And, to say truth, it was but to 'a beggarly account of empty boxes,'—a thing very strange to me nowadays. The theatre is an old barn of a place, and reminds me very much of the itinerant expeditions of my early days in Ohio and Kentucky, days which often come back to my thought and twinge me with their bitter-sweet memories. This edifice, however, is rendered sacred in my eyes by the remembrance that George Frederick Cooke once performed in it to enraptured audiences. The company is wretched, but to-morrow it is to receive new acquisitions, and fair hopes are aroused that in the event the enterprise will prove profitable.

"Last Monday evening, while enacting the character of Virginius, in one of the most impassioned scenes, the blood rushed with such violence into my head that it was with the utmost difficulty I could complete the performance. Never in the course of my life have I experienced such agony and horror as in that moment. I returned to my lodgings and vainly commended myself to sleep. It was not till I had had administered to me an anodyne powerful enough to have made me at any other time sleep the sleep of death that I could secure repose. The next morning I awoke unrefreshed and with little abatement of the pain. A physician was sent for, who cupped me on the back of the neck, producing instant relief. I have since been rapidly recovering, and shall, no doubt, be perfectly competent to the intended performance of Jaffier to-morrow night.

"I hope to pass a day or two with you about the 4th of July. Tell the girls I shall bring them some presents. By the time I reach New York you shall hear further about the bust for which I have given sittings to a sculptor at the request of a group of my friends.

"Your affectionate son,

"Edwin Forrest."

By his fidelity in varied physical drill, Forrest had become a prodigy of strength and endurance. With vivid passions, enormous vitality, an ingenuous and sympathetic soul, a most attractive person, in the unconventional habits of the freest of the professions, few men were ever more beset within and without by the temptations to a dissipated and spendthrift course. One guardian influence against these temptations was the warning examples of so many members of his profession whom he saw ruined by such indulgences, losing self-respect and sinking to the lowest abandonment, coming to untimely graves, or left in their age destitute and helpless. As one instance after another of this sort came under his observation, he resolved to heed the lesson, to be industrious, temperate, and prudent, and to husband his earnings. His spontaneous tendency was to profusion, and he gave away and lent lavishly. Learning wisdom, he became more careful in lending, but always continued liberal in giving, and never had a passion for saving until, largely alienated from society, he fell back as a natural resource on that habit of accumulation which is so apt to grow by what it feeds on.

But another influence of restraint and carefulness was stronger with him than fear, and that was filial duty and love. Looking back to those days from the closing part of his life, he said, with deep emotion, "One of the strongest incentives to me in my early exertions was the desire of relieving my mother and my sisters by securing them independence and comfort in a home of their own." This sacred purpose he had promised himself to fulfil. He never lost sight of it. Under date of Buffalo, August 18th, 1827, he had written the following letter to his mother:

"Dear Mother,—After a tedious and not very profitable engagement at Albany, I proceeded thence in a westerly direction with my friend D. P. Ingraham, of whom you have often heard me speak in terms of respect and admiration. I make this journey for the purpose of recreation, in viewing the romantic beauties with which nature has clothed and adorned herself in this part of our country, and the developments of art and industry which are here so rapidly leading to wealth and happiness. I have passed through a series of flourishing towns,—Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Clinton, Vernon, Auburn, Canandaigua, Rochester, and others,—all of which have given me delight. Buffalo is in a dull situation, and I shall leave at once in a steamboat for the Falls of Niagara. Before this tremendous and sublime cataract I anticipate much pleasure in the excitement of those exalted feelings in which my soul loves to luxuriate. From there we shall go to Montreal and Quebec, and then return to New York.

"Before beginning my winter engagement I shall visit you. My salary for the next year is advanced from $40 a week to $400. I should now like—and indeed no pleasure in the world could equal it—to settle you and my dear sisters down in some respectable, handsome, and quiet part of Philadelphia, where you may gently pass your dear reserves of time apart from the care and toil with which you have too long been forced to struggle. I say Philadelphia, because I fear you could not be prevailed on to come to New York. And indeed I do not wonder; for, besides the numerous circle of friends you have, it is there that the sacred ashes of my father lie.

"I shall write more fully anon.

"Your affectionate son,

"Edwin."

For three years now his income had been large and his investments sagacious. The time had arrived for carrying out his design. It was the autumn of 1829, when he was but twenty-three years old. Collecting everything he possessed, he went from New York to Philadelphia, paid the debts his father had left at his death twelve years before, bought a house in the name of his mother and sisters, and deposited in the bank to their account all he had remaining, thus securing them a handsome support whatever might happen to him. What a luxury it must have been to him to do this! It was the proudest and sweetest day he had known in his life. The deed was an unobtrusive one, with no scenery to emblazon it, no crowd to applaud; but the most eloquent climax he ever made on the stage could not speak so strongly to the heart. His own heart must have made blessed music in his breast as he returned to New York thinking that for his dear mother and sisters, after so many years of bitter poverty and toil, now there was to be no more drudgery or anxiety. Meeting his friend Lawson the evening after his return, he exclaimed, "Thank God, I am not worth a ducat!" and, relating what he had done, received his heartiest congratulations on it.

At this time American literature in all its forms was chiefly derived from English sources. As yet it scarcely had any vigorous, independent existence. This was emphatically true of the drama. Hardly a play of any success or note had been produced in this country by a native author. All the literary circles were slavishly subjected to English authority, and this whole province of life, both in respect of intellectual production and taste and in respect to the business management of it, was principally under English control. The managers of our theatres felt that their interest lay in getting tested plays from abroad at a merely nominal price, rather than in expending larger sums on the risky experiment of securing original productions at home. But Forrest was never an unthinking conformist in anything, accepting what was customary simply because it was easiest and because others did so. He had a bold individuality which was constantly showing itself. The feeling of nationality and patriotic pride, too, was always intense in him. Moved by this sentiment, as well as by the desire to secure some parts which should be exclusively his own, he began a series of liberal offers, from five hundred to three thousand dollars each, for original plays by American authors. He hoped thus to do something towards the creation of an American Dramatic Literature in the plays which our writers would be stimulated to produce, and to contribute in his own representations of them some original types of acted characters to the youthful stage of his country. He was the first American actor who had ever had the enterprise, ambition, and liberality to do this. It shows generous qualities of character,—the boldness of genius and faith,—especially when it is remembered that he was only twenty-two years old when he issued his first proposal, which was published by his friend Leggett with a brief preface in a weekly review of which he was then proprietor and editor:

"We have received the following note from Edwin Forrest, and take great pleasure in communicating his generous proposition to the public in his own language. It is much to be desired that native genius may be aroused by this offer from native genius, and that writers worthy to win may enter the laudable competition.

"'Dear Sir,—Feeling extremely desirous that dramatic letters should be more cultivated in my native country, and believing that the dearth of writers in that department is rather the result of a want of the proper incentive than of any deficiency of the requisite talents, I should feel greatly obliged to you if you would communicate to the public, in the next number of the 'Critic,' the following offer. To the author of the best Tragedy, in five acts, of which the hero or principal character shall be an aboriginal of this country, the sum of five hundred dollars, and half of the proceeds of the third representation, with my own gratuitous services on that occasion. The award to be made by a committee of literary and theatrical gentlemen.'"

The committee selected by Forrest consisted of his friends Bryant, Halleck, Lawson, Leggett, Wetmore, and Brooks. Fourteen plays were presented in competition, and the prize was adjudged to Metamora, or the Last of the Wampanoags, by John Augustus Stone, of Philadelphia. Afterwards, at intervals, a similar or a larger premium was offered, until he had secured, in all, nine prize plays: Metamora, Oraloosa, and The Ancient Briton, by Stone; The Gladiator, Pelopidas, and The Broker of Bogota, by Robert Montgomery Bird; Caius Marius, by Richard Penn Smith; Jack Cade, by Robert T. Conrad; and Mohammed, by George H. Miles. In the last instance about eighty productions were forwarded to the judges, and, as not one of them was thought to meet the conditions assigned, Forrest sent his check for a thousand dollars to the author of Mohammed, as that was considered the most effective composition, though not well adapted to the stage. The result of his efforts in fostering a native drama was indirectly wide and lasting, in calling general attention to this province of letters and stimulating much able work in it. The result directly was the writing of about two hundred plays, nine of which received prizes. Of these nine-five proved failures after a few trials. But four, namely, Metamora, The Gladiator, The Broker of Bogota, and Jack Cade, possessed remarkable merits, acquired an immense popularity, and are permanently identified both with his personal fame and with the history of the American stage. An analysis of their plots, specimens of their language, and a description of the dramatic character of Forrest in his imposing power and purest originality as the impersonator of their heroes will be given in the next chapter. In leaving this feature of his career, its substance may be briefly summed up. In one way and another, first and last, he paid out from his private purse for the encouragement of a native dramatic literature as much as twenty thousand dollars, in premiums, benefits, and gratuities to several of the unfortunate authors. Recalling his early poverty, scanty education, and hard struggles, this fact speaks for itself. And the ridicule often in his life cast on him for the comparative failure of the undertaking in a high literary sense, is cheap and unmanly. It was a noble example. Its success personally, and pecuniarily, was emphatic and brilliant in the extreme. Its public influence was neither small nor dishonorable.

While Forrest was filling an engagement in Augusta, Georgia, in 1831, there appeared in the "Chronicle" of that city, from the pen of its editor, A. H. Pemberton, a spirited and vigorous article, entitled "Calumny Refuted, A Defence of the Drama." It was written in response to an article called "Theatre versus Sunday-Schools," published in "The Charleston Observer" by a Presbyterian clergyman named Gildersleeve. The "Chronicle" had warmly commended a favorite actress to the patronage of the citizens of Augusta on occasion of her benefit; whereupon Gildersleeve attacked, from a sectarian point of view, the editor, the actress, and the theatrical art and profession, displaying a narrow and intolerant spirit. Forrest was so much pleased with the ability and catholic temper of the reply which followed, that he had it printed in a pamphlet, with this dedication:

"To Mrs. Brown:

"Madam,—With much pleasure we dedicate to you the following pages from the pen of the editor of the Augusta 'Chronicle,' whose testimony to your amiable qualities in private life and your talents in the dramatic profession we cordially concur in, convinced that the base and unmerited attack which has drawn forth the present publication will meet the reprobation of an enlightened community, and ensure you the public favor you so truly deserve. Wishing you all health and happiness, we remain, Madam, your obedient servants."

Signed by Edwin Forrest and fifteen other actors and actresses.

The summer of 1831 Forrest spent with his friend Robert M. Bird, author of The Gladiator, in a long and delightful tour, visiting the Falls of Niagara, the Natural Bridge in Virginia, the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, and passing through the Southern States by way of New Orleans to Vera Cruz and Mexico. Just before starting on this journey he had brought out one of his new plays in Philadelphia, referring to which the "Chronicle" said, "We hope that to-night Mr. Forrest will perceive in pit, box, and gallery substantial proof that his fellow-citizens appreciate his exertions in insuring the success of plays produced by his countrymen, and that they are anxious to treat him with a liberality like that which has always distinguished himself."

His parting performance was Lear. The house was thronged to its utmost capacity, and when the curtain fell there were unanimous and long-continued calls for him. He came forward and made the following speech:

"Ladies and Gentlemen,—Though exhausted by the exertions of the evening, I cannot resist the opportunity, thus kindly afforded, to return my unfeigned thanks, not only for the unceasing patronage and liberal applause which you have bestowed upon my humble efforts as a tragedian, but also for your unequivocal approbation of my labors in a cause, the accomplishment of which is the proudest wish of my heart; I mean the establishment of an American National Drama.

"My endeavors cannot but be crowned with success when thus ably seconded by the intelligence of a community whose kindness I most gratefully acknowledge, and whose good opinion it would be my boast to deserve.

"I am, for a while, about to forego the gratification of your smiles,—to exchange the populous city for the mountain-top, the broad lake, the flowering prairie, and the solitude of the pathless wood,—in the hope that, thus communing, my heart may be lifted up, and I may with more fidelity portray the lofty grandeur of the tragic muse from having gazed into the harmonious, unerring, and interminable volume of Nature.

"Trusting I shall have the honor of appearing before you again next season, I wish you the enjoyment of uninterrupted health and happiness, and bid you, regretfully, Adieu."

Dr. Bird was an excellent travelling companion, being a man of most genial quality, fine talents and scholarship, master of the Spanish language, and very familiar with South America in its history, geography, and scenery, and the characteristic traits of its people. The scenes of two of his dramas were laid here; and at BogotÁ and in Peru they talked over the fates of Febro the Broker, and Oraloosa, the last of the Incas. The trip proved a charming and profitable one, and the friends came back to their tasks with increased zeal and vigor.

During the years now under review—from 1827 to 1834—the success and prosperity of Forrest were uninterrupted and unbounded. Not a single incident occurred seriously to mar his happiness. Professional and social honors flowed on him from all quarters. The obstacles put in his way became stepping-stones. He seemed to need only to wish a prize in order to receive it. Ensphered in the splendid and sounding reputation he had won, he passed in starring engagements from city to city through the land, everywhere welcomed with enthusiastic acclaim and the mark of incessant private attentions. To be a popular favorite in this country fifty years ago was a very different thing from what it is now. Then a famous man stood out conspicuously, and was heralded and followed and huzzaed and talked about in a degree scarcely credible to the present generation. Every day the individual seems to wither and dwindle more and more as society dilates and clamors and pushes its monopolizing claims. The conflict of interests, the noisy and hurrying battle of life, the distracting multiplicity of pursuits, duties, and amusements, leave us neither time nor faculty for leisurely contemplation or for disinterestedly admiring other people. We are absorbed in ourselves and the frittering hurly-burly about us. Fame is less sincere and valuable, less easily retained, than it used to be when public attention was not so preoccupied, so jaded and fickle. Those who are accustomed to the rapid succession of actors, singers, orators, coming each season, taking their fees, their bouquets, their applause, and utterly forgotten as soon as they have passed, cannot well realize the extent and steadfastness of the proud affection with which the American people regarded Forrest. Nothing like it seems possible now.

He keenly enjoyed this popularity. Open-hearted as he was, and democratic in temper, nothing else could have given him so much pleasure or have been so stimulating to his ambition as this idolatry from the masses. It was as a luxurious incense in his nostrils; and it made him comparatively insensible to those sneers and snarls, those malignant insinuations and mocking comments which no one running such a triumphant career could expect altogether to escape. His prosperity was so great, his progress so rapid and constant, his friends so numerous and warm, the common tone of the press so eulogistic, that it was easy for him to shed the assaults of his enemies unnoticed, and to meet the gibes of rancorous critics with equanimity. Firm in his health, proud in his strength, assured in his place, frank and trusting in his love, and satisfied with his work and its prizes, he could afford to smile at impotent attacks. He did so, and stood them for a long time undisturbed.

But when, in later years, the bloom had been somewhat brushed from life, and the freshness worn from experience, and the meaner phases of human nature abundantly brought home to him,—then the war of incompetent and unprincipled criticism, the storm of virulent personal animosities, raging ever worse and worse, was a very different thing. Then the stings of ridicule and falsehood were bitterly felt and resented. Their poison sank deeply into his soul, and, rankling there, made him a changed man. In a subsequent chapter there will be an occasion to do justice to this subject and to its morals by a full treatment. It is appropriate here merely to explain the causes of the unfair depreciation and the venomous hostility with which he was pursued from the time he first appeared suddenly in the theatrical firmament as a star of the first magnitude.

The first cause of the endless flings, aspersions, and belittling valuations of which Forrest was the subject is to be found in the mere fact of his success itself. Every one familiar with the workings of unregenerate human nature must confess the truth of this assertion, dark and sad as it is. In this world of baffled aspirants and jealous rivals the man who surpasses his competitors finds himself amidst a host of foes, who, soured and angry at their own failure, are mortified by his success and strive by malignant detractions to blacken his laurels and drag him down to themselves. Envy is a frightful power among men, and it is said by De Tocqueville to be the characteristic vice of a democracy. Like a diseased eye, it is offended by everything bright. Nobody assails the nobodies who never undertake anything. Few assail the incompetents who fail in what they undertake. But let a strong man conspicuously cover himself with coveted prizes, and hundreds will be snarling at his heels, barking at his glory, eagerly declaring that he does not deserve his success, but that it properly belongs to them. A vast quantity of acrimonious criticism originates in envy. The ancient Roman victors when they rode in a Triumph wore amulets as a protection against the evil eyes of envy.

Another cause in Forrest of offence and numerous dislike was the pronounced distinctiveness of his character, his marked and independent manhood. Most people are of the conventional type in personality and manners, each one as the rest are. And their likings are confined to those of their own stamp. A man of fresh and decisive originality, who is and appears just what God and nature have made him, who thinks for himself, speaks for himself, acts himself out with freedom and power, disturbs and repels them. He irritates their prejudices by violating their standards. His frank and flexible spontaneity, his uncovered impulsive revelation of his feelings, and fearless choice of what he will do or will not do, imply a tacit contempt for their meek conformities and spirit of routine. Thus their self-esteem is hurt and they are made angry. Forrest was a man of this kind, not addicted to swear in the polished phrase of the magistrate, but in his own honest vernacular. The true theory of republican America is that the people should not be cast in the monotonous moulds of certain classes or types, the national character a fixed repetition, but that every citizen should be in himself a priest and a king before God, with his own form and color and relish of individuality unrepressed by any foreign dictation. This democratic idea was well realized in Edwin Forrest. It made him all his life a touchstone of hostility to those whose social subserviency it rebuked or whose aristocratic prejudices it set bristling.

He drew forth the animosity and injurious influence of a third set of opponents from among the least noble and successful members of his own profession, with whom, from dissimilarities of tastes and habits and preference for the opportunities of higher intercourse opened to him, he did not intimately associate as an equal. He had an ample supply of friends and comrades endowed with distinguished talents and proud aspirations, scholars, poets, jurists, statesmen, whose fellowship strengthened his ambition, nourished his mind, refined his fancy, gratified his affections, and led him into the ideal world of books and art. Courted by such gentlemen, with his rising fame and fortune he naturally chose their society, to the neglect of that of his fellow-actors whose haunts were low, whose habits loose, and whose professional status a dull and hopeless mediocrity. It is not customary for the distinguished leaders and masters in any profession to associate in close intimacy with the rank and file of workmen in their departments. It is customary, however, for the rank and file to resent the neglect and take their revenge in flouting. Giotto, Lionardo, Raphael, Titian, did not hob-nob and lounge with the ordinary painters of their day. The friends of artists are not artisans, but other artists, their peers, noble patrons, celebrated persons, and inspiring coadjutors. The blame so bitterly and often cast on Forrest in this respect was unjust. The vindictive personal censures which his sometimes absorbed and distant bearing elicited from injured self-love were ignoble. The stock is no doubt often provoked to sneer at the Star; but the action is not beautiful or worthy of deferential attention. If the ordinary members of a profession, instead of looking askance at the extraordinary ones and indulging in detraction, would cultivate admiring sympathy, aspiring intelligence, and nobleness, they would soon bridge the chasm that separates them. It is the absence of generous sensibility and self-respecting application that at once keeps them inferiors and prevents their superiors from becoming their intimates. In the last twenty-five years of his life Forrest had, as a consequence of what he had been through, an explosive irritability of temperament, and not infrequently in moving among theatrical companies betrayed an imperious sense of power. But he was profoundly just, ready instantly to make princely amends when convinced of an error or wrong; and under his harsh and volcanic exterior there always, even to the very last, slept a deep spring of tenderness pure enough to reflect the eyes of angels. It was perfectly natural that he should be misjudged. Not one in a thousand could be expected to have the generous insight, the detachment and gentleness, needed to read him aright. Consequently, a swarm of false accusations and angry remarks pursued him like a buzz of wasps enveloping his head.

Still further, he incurred the special resentment of that class of newspaper critics who expected to receive tribute from those whom they condescended to praise. Many of these writers for the press have been so accustomed to be courted, flattered, compensated, that they have come to regard a failure on the part of a public performer to propitiate their good graces in advance by suppliant attentions, and to acknowledge them afterwards by thanks if not by rewards, as just cause for turning their pens against the delinquent. Forrest was always too honest and too proud to stoop to anything of this kind. He strove to do the best justice in his power to the characters he impersonated, and would then leave the verdict to the instincts of the public and the unbiassed judgments of competent critics. The utter falsity, unfairness, shallowness, and absurdity which so often marked the dramatic critiques of the press, a large proportion of which were written by persons not only notoriously prejudiced and unprincipled but also ignorant of the elementary principles of criticism, early disgusted and angered him to such a degree that he would have nothing whatever to do with this class of writers, but turned from them with disdain. They knew his feeling, and they sought their revenge by every sort of exaggeration and caricature. With artifices of misrepresentation, burlesque, elaborate assault, and incidental jeer, they racked their ingenuity to lessen his reputation and make him wince. They succeeded better in the latter than in the former.

At that time, as has been said, the influence of English literature and talent held almost exclusive possession of the field in this country, most especially in theatrical matters. All the great travelling stars of the stage, until Forrest rose, had been drawn from the English galaxy. The chief dramatic critics were Englishmen. There was a strong banded interest to keep these things so. But the rising spirit of nationality was beginning to assert itself. In the conflict that ensued, Forrest was made a central figure around whom the struggle raged most fiercely. The English clique were pledged to maintain the supremacy of their own school and its representatives, while the Americans stood up distinctively in support and praise of whatever was native. A majority of the worst critiques against Forrest were written by foreigners under the instigation of the English clique. The extent and power of this passionate bias on both sides are now so nearly a mere matter of the past that it is not easy for the present generation to realize them. The manager of a prominent New York journal enlisted on the English side, who had a strong antipathy to Forrest on personal grounds, resolved to write him down, cost what it might. A friend of the actor said to the editor, "You cannot do it; he is too popular." The editor replied, "The continual dropping of water wears away the stone," and made his columns pour an incessant rain of satire and abuse. Many a damaging estimate was levelled against him simply as the first American tragedian who had by his original power acquired a national reputation and promised through his increasing imitators to found a school.

Besides all these sets of hostile regarders, he was misliked as a man and maligned or disesteemed as an actor by another class, whose representatives are very numerous, namely, those persons of a feeble and squeamish constitution and sickly delicacy who could not stand the powerful shocks he administered to their nerves. The robust and towering specimens of impassioned manhood which he exhibited, teeming with fearless energies, constantly breaking into colossal attitudes and gestures, lightnings of expression and thunderbolts of speech, were too much for them. Their quivering sensitiveness cowered before his terrible fire and stride, and shrank from him with fear; and fear is the parent of hate. Faint ladies, spruce clerks, spindling fops, and perfumed dandies were horrified and wellnigh thrown into convulsions by his Gladiator and Jack Cade. Then they vented their own weakness and ignorance of virile truth in querulous complaints of his measureless coarseness and ferocity. It is obvious that weaklings will shudder before such heroic volcanoes of men as Hotspur and Coriolanus and resent their own terror on its cause. Forrest produced the same effect when he personated such overwhelming characters on the stage. Made on that pattern and stocked with ammunition on that scale, he lived as it were in reality the parts he played in fiction, and was ever, in his own way and in his own measure, true to nature and life. The lion and the tiger are not to be toned down to the style of the antelope or the mouse because timid spectators may desire it for the sparing of their nerves.

Finally, one more class of play-goers were continually censuring Forrest, casting blame even on his best portrayals. They had better grounds for their fault-finding than the others, and were partly justified in their verdicts, only unjust in their wilful exaggeration of his defects and ungenerous in their prejudiced denial of his conspicuous and imposing merits. Reference is now made to the select class of refined and scholarly minds, exquisitely cultivated in all directions, who insist that art is distinct from nature, being the purified and heightened reflection of nature through the mind at one remove from reality. Exuberance of power and sincerity was the primary greatness of Forrest as a tragedian. A small but most commanding portion of the public maintained that this too was the chief foible and limitation of his excellence, leading him to attempt on the stage a living resurrection of the crude truth of nature in place of that idealized softening and tempered reflex which is the genuine province of art. Shakspeare himself said that the end of playing was and is not to bring nature herself upon the stage, but to hold the mirror up to nature. The perfected artistic actor does not bring before his audience the reality itself of life with all its interclinging entanglements of passion and muscle, but he drops the repulsive details, all unessential vulgarities, refines and combines the chief features, harmonizing and heightening them in the process, and shows the result as a free picture, like the original in form and color and moving, but without its tearing ruggedness or expense of volition. This view is a true one, though not the adequate truth in its completeness. And this criticism is proper, though they who brought it against Forrest, in their intolerance, urged it beyond its fair application to him. It never was claimed that he was a perfect artist; it cannot be honestly denied that he was a great one. As a rule he did, no doubt, lack that last and most irresistible charm of genius, the easy curbing of expenditure which is the divine girdle of art. The bewitchment of the fairest of the goddesses lay in her cestus. The enchanting cestus of art is continence around strength. Human nature flung back on its elemental experiences in their extremest energy breaks loose from the finished forms and manners of polite society, and the conventional members of polite society are naturally displeased with the player who presents a specimen of this kind in its tempestuous truth not refined and tamed to their code. The great characters of Forrest were statues of their originals, recast in their native moulds in his imagination and heart, and placed directly on the stage in living action. The excrescences unremoved by the chisel and file did not lessen their truth or affect their sublimity. But in the eyes of dilettante critics who had no free intellect behind their glasses and no generous passions beneath their gloves, a perception of the marks of the moulds caused all the heroic grandeur of the images to go for nothing.

It is necessary to bear in mind these six classes of critics in order justly to understand the career of Forrest as an actor with the extraordinary amount of depreciation, invective, and ridicule he encountered as an offset to his surpassing popular success. For before the cliques of critics spoke, while they were speaking, and after they had spoken, unaffected by anything they said, the general average of theatre-goers were played upon in their manliest sympathies by him as by no other actor of his time, and the great mass of the people followed him with their loving admiration and praise like a flood. And in such matters as this, we may be well assured, the permanent judgment of the multitude is never grandly wrong, however pettily right the opinion of the opposing few may be.

January 8th, 1834, Forrest wrote to Henry Hart, officer of a literary society in Albany, the following eminently characteristic letter. The period of critical transition from youth to manhood which he spent in Albany had left lingering recollections of interest and gratitude in him which he gladly availed himself of this opportunity to express in an act of public spirit.

"Sir,—The laudable zeal you have evinced in forming of the Young Men of Albany, without regard to individual condition, an Association for Mutual Improvement, is alike creditable to the heads that projected and the hearts that resolved it. In a country like ours, where all men are free and equal, no aristocracy should be tolerated, save that aristocracy of superior mind, before which none need be ashamed to bow. Young men of all occupations will now have a place stored with useful knowledge where at their leisure they may assemble for mutual instruction and the free interchange of sentiment. A taste for American letters should be carefully disseminated among them, and the parasitical opinion cannot be too soon exploded which teaches that 'nothing can be so good as that which emanates from abroad.' Our literature should be independent; and with a hearty wish that the fetters of prejudice which surround it may soon be broken, I enclose the sum of one hundred dollars to be appropriated to the purchase of books purely American, to be placed in the library for the use of the young men of Albany."

To this letter an interesting reply was written by the president of the Association, Amos Dean:

"The Committee propose, sir, to expend your donation in the purchase of books containing our political history, which, unlike that of most other nations, is made up of the opinions and acts of a People, and not of a Court. Our national existence was the commencement of a new era in the political history of the world. In the commencement and continuance of that existence, three things are to be regarded,—the reason, the act, and the consequence. The first is found in the recorded wisdom of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, Franklin, and a host of other worthies who shed the brilliant light of the most gifted order of intellect around the incipient struggles of an infant nation. The second, in the firm resolves of our first councils, and the eloquent voice of our early battle-fields. The third, in the many interesting events of our subsequent history, and on the living page of our present prosperity.

"These constitute a whole, and the books from which that whole is derivable must necessarily be 'books purely American.' We shall preserve and regard them as monuments of your munificence."

He was now twenty-eight years of age. He had been steadily on the stage for over twelve years. The regular succession of engagements, and even the constant repetition of enthusiastic crowds and applause, began to be monotonous. He had accumulated a fortune of nearly two hundred thousand dollars, and could afford a season of rest. He felt that it would be a relief to throw off the professional harness for a while, and look out upon life from an independent point of view. He was also well aware that there was much for him yet to learn, heights in his own art which he was far from having attained, and he longed for a large interval of exemption from toil and care, wherein he might quietly apply his faculties to learn, and let his energies lie fallow for a new lease of exertion in the loftiest field of the drama. Accordingly, he determined to set apart two years for travel, observation, study, pleasure, and improvement in the principal countries of the Old World.

Before his departure he received a public tribute of respect and affection of such a character and from a collection of such distinguished men that any man in the country, no matter of what profession or rank, might well have felt proud to receive it. It took place on the 25th of July, and the following account of the affair is condensed from a report which appeared in the New York "Evening Post" immediately afterwards:

"The intention of Mr. Forrest to visit Europe having been stated in the public papers, his approaching departure was considered, by a large number of his fellow-citizens, as presenting a proper occasion to express to him, by some suitable public tribute, the estimation in which he is held, alike for those talents which had placed him at the head of his profession, and those virtues which had endeared him to his friends. To carry out this object, a meeting was held at the Shakspeare Hotel, when the subject was fully discussed, and a committee appointed to consider and report to a subsequent meeting the mode in which the object should be accomplished, so that the tribute might be creditable to the taste of those presenting it and worthy of the high character and merit of him to whom it was to be rendered. In the mean while, the following gentlemen signed a paper expressing the desire of the subscribers to take part in the contemplated testimonial:

"The committee to whom the matter had been referred reported that a gold medal, with a bust of Mr. Forrest in profile on one side, surrounded by a legend in these words, Histriom Optimo, Eduino Forrest, Viro PrÆstanti, and a figure of the genius of Tragedy with suitable emblems on the other, surrounded, as a legend, with the following quotation from Shakspeare, 'Great in mouths of wisest censure,' would perhaps constitute the most expressive and acceptable token of those sentiments of admiration and regard which it was the wish of the subscribers to testify to Mr. Forrest. The report having been unanimously adopted, the task of drawing up suitable designs was confided to Mr. Charles C. Ingham. The dies were engraved by Mr. C. C. Wright.

"In accordance with the suggestions of many citizens, a public dinner to Mr. Forrest was agreed upon as furnishing the most appropriate opportunity of presenting to him this token of their regard. To this end a committee was charged to make the necessary arrangements, and the following is their invitation addressed to Mr. Forrest, together with his reply:

"New York, July 10, 1834.

"To Edwin Forrest, Esq.

"Dear Sir,—A number of your friends, learning your intention shortly to visit Europe, are desirous, before your departure, of an opportunity of expressing, in some public manner, their sense of your merits, professional and personal. It would be a source of regret to them if one so esteemed, while sojourning in foreign lands, should possess no memorial of the regard entertained for him in his own.

"We have been charged as a committee, with a view to carry this purpose into execution, to request the pleasure of your company at a dinner, at the City Hotel, on any day most agreeable to yourself.

"With sincere esteem and respect,

"We are your ob't serv'ts,

"Washington Hotel, July 12th, 1834.

"Gentlemen,—I have had the honor to receive your communication of the 10th instant, inviting me to dine with a number of my friends at the City Hotel previous to my approaching departure for Europe, and signifying a desire to bestow upon me some token of regard, which, as I journey in foreign lands, may preserve in my memory the friends I leave in my own.

"I have received too many and too important testimonials from my friends in New York to render any additional memorial necessary for the purpose you indicate. But, knowing the pleasure which generous natures feel in bestowing benefactions, I accept with lively satisfaction the invitation you have conveyed to me in such grateful terms; and may be excused if, in doing so, I express my regret that the object of your kindness is not more worthy so distinguished a mark of favor.

"With your permission, gentlemen, I will name Friday, the 25th instant, as the day when it will best comport with the arrangements I have already made, to meet you as proposed.

"I am, with sentiments of great

respect and regard,

your ob't serv't,

"Edwin Forrest.

"Messrs. Wm. Dunlap, and others.

"On Friday last, the day named by Mr. Forrest, this gratifying testimonial of regard for an individual whose character as a citizen, not less than his genius as an actor, has insured for him general respect, was carried into effect at the City Hotel. The repast provided for the occasion by Mr. Jennings, the accomplished director of that establishment, displayed all that taste and splendor for which his entertainments are remarkable. At six o'clock a very numerous company, comprising a large number of our most distinguished and talented citizens, sat down to the table. The Honorable Wm. T. McCoun, Vice-Chancellor, presided, assisted by General Prosper M. Wetmore, Mr. Justice Lownds, and Alderman Geo. D. Strong as Vice-Presidents. On the right of the President was seated the guest in whose honor the feast was provided, and on his left the Honorable Cornelius W. Lawrence, Mayor of the City. Among the guests were the managers of the several principal theatres in the United States in which the genius of Mr. Forrest has been most frequently exercised, together with several of the most esteemed members of the theatrical profession; among them the veteran Cooper and the inimitable and estimable Placide.

"On the removal of the cloth the following regular toasts were proposed:

"REGULAR TOASTS.

"1. The Drama.—The mirror of nature, in which life, like Narcissus, delights to contemplate its own image.

"2. Shakspeare.—Like his own Banquo, 'father of a line of kings'—monarchs who rule with absolute sway the passions and sympathies of the human heart.

"Previous to offering the third toast, the chairman, Chancellor McCoun, addressed the company in the following terms:

"To your kindness and partiality, gentlemen, I owe it that the pleasing duty devolves upon me of consummating the object for which we are this day met together. To render a suitable acknowledgment to worth is one of the most grateful employments of generous minds. But with how much more alacrity is such an office undertaken when the worth is of so mingled a character that it equally commands the admiration of our intellects and the applause of our hearts, and when it is to be exercised not for merit of foreign growth and already stamped with foreign approbation, but for the offspring of our own soil and nursed into fame by our own encouragement.

"Eight years ago a youth came to this city unheralded and almost unknown. His first introduction to the community was through one of those acts of kindness on his part by which his whole subsequent career has been distinguished. To add a few dollars to the slender means of a poor but industrious and worthy native actor, this youth, his diffidence overcome by his sympathy, appeared in the arduous character of Othello before a metropolitan audience. What was the astonishment and delight of the spectators when, instead of a raw and ungainly tyro, they beheld one who needed only a few finishing touches to render him the peer of the proudest in his art! A rival theatre was then rapidly rising under the superintendence of a man who has had few superiors as a director of the mimic world of the stage. To this theatre the unheralded youth (now the 'observed of all observers') was speedily transferred, and during the most brilliant period of its history was its 'bright particular star.' Allured by the strange and attractive light, the wealth, the talent, the fashion and respectability of the city nightly crowded its benches. The carriages of the luxurious were drawn up in long retinue before its doors, and the laborious left their tasks and repaired in throngs to sit entranced beneath the actor's potent spell. Not Goodman's Fields, when Garrick burst, a kindred prodigy, on the astonished London audience, displayed nightly a gayer scene nor resounded with heartier plaudits.

"Such success naturally elicited from rival theatres the most splendid offers; yet, though earning a poor stipend and held but by a verbal tie, this honorable boy—his prospects altered but his mind the same—gave promptly such replies as showed that he valued integrity at its proper price. I shall be pardoned for thus adverting to one such instance among the many that might be adduced as finely illustrative of his character to whose honor it is mentioned.

"The time soon came, however, when he began to reap a harvest of profit as well as fame. And one of the first uses to which he turned his prosperity was to arouse the dramatic talent of his countrymen. The fruits of his liberality and judgment are several of the most popular and meritorious tragedies which have been produced on the modern stage. One of them, wholly American in its character and incidents, has been performed more frequently and with more advantage to the theatres than any other play in the same period of time on either side of the Atlantic. Though not without defects as a drama, it has the merit of presenting a strong and natural portrait of one of the most remarkable warriors of a race the last relics of which are fast melting away before the advancing tide of civilization. Yet, whatever the intrinsic qualities of the production, no one has witnessed it without feeling that its popularity is mainly to be ascribed to the bold, faithful, and spirited personation of the principal character; and, as the original of Metamora died with King Philip, so his scenic existence will terminate with the actor who introduced him to the stage. Among the other dramatic productions which the same professional perspicuity and generous feeling gave rise to are two or three of extraordinary merit. One of them, The Gladiator, for scenic effect, strongly-marked and well-contrasted characters, and fine nervous language, is surpassed by few dramas of modern times.

"But while this young actor was thus encouraging with liberal hand the literary genius of our countrymen, many an admiring audience beheld through the medium of his personations the noblest creations of the noblest bards of the Old World 'live o'er the scene' in all that reality which only acting gives.

"Gentlemen, I have thus far dwelt on points in this performer's history and character with which you are all acquainted. There are other topics on which I might touch—did I not fear to invade the sanctuary of the heart—not less entitled to your admiration. But there are some feelings in breasts of honor and delicacy which, though commendable, cannot brook exposure; as there are plants which flourish in the caves of ocean that wither when brought to the light of day. I shall therefore simply say that in his private relations, as in his public career, he has performed well his part, and made esteem a twin sentiment with admiration in every heart that knows him. I need not tell you, gentlemen, that I speak of Edwin Forrest.

"Mr. Forrest is on the eve of departure for foreign lands. To a man combining so many claims on our regard, it has been thought proper by his fellow-citizens to present a farewell token of friendship and respect,—a token which may at once serve to keep him mindful that Americans properly appreciate the genius and worth of their own land, and which may testify to foreigners the high place he holds in our esteem.

"Mr. Forrest, I now place this memorial in your hands. It is one in which many of your countrymen have been emulous to bear a part. It is a proud proof of unusual virtues and talents, and as such may be proudly worn. You will mingle in throngs where jewelled insignia glitter on titled breasts; but yours may justly be the reflection that few badges of distinction are the reward of qualities so deserving of honor as those attested by the humbler memorial which now rests upon your bosom.

"Gentlemen, I propose to you,—

"Edwin Forrest—Estimable for his virtues, admirable for his talents. Good wishes attend his departure, and warm hearts will greet his return.

"The speaker was interrupted at different points of his address with the most enthusiastic applause, and on its conclusion the apartment resounded with unanimous, hearty, and prolonged cheers, attesting at once the concurrence of his hearers in the justness of his sentiments and their sense of the happy and eloquent language in which they were conveyed. When this applause at length subsided, Mr. Forrest rose, and in a style of simple and unaffected modesty returned his acknowledgments in a speech, of which we believe the following is nearly an accurate report:

"Mr. President and Gentlemen,—A member of a profession which brings me nightly to speak before multitudes, it might seem affectation in me to express how much I am overcome by these distinguishing marks of your kindness and approbation. I stand not now before you to repeat the sentiments of the dramatist, but in my own poor phrase to give utterance to feelings which even the language of poetry could not too strongly embody; and I feel this evening how much easier it is to counterfeit emotions on the mimic scene of the stage than to repress the real and embarrassing yet grateful agitation which this rich token of your favor has occasioned. My thanks must therefore be rendered in the most simple and unstudied language, for I feel 'I am no actor here.'

"You have made allusion in terms of flattering kindness to a period of my life I can never contemplate without emotions of the most thrilling and pleasurable nature,—a period which beheld me, with a suddenness of transition more like a dream than reality, one day a poor, unknown, and unfriended boy, and the next surrounded by 'troops of friends,' counsellors ready to advise, and generous hearts prodigal of regard. In my immature and unschooled efforts lenient critics saw, or thought they saw, some latent evidences of talent, and, with a generosity rarely equalled, crowded around me with encouragement in payment of anticipated desert. The same spirit of kindness which matured the germ continued its fostering influence through each successive development; and now, at the end of eight years (eight little years,—how brief they have been made by you!), with unexhausted, nay, increasing munificence, that spirit exercises itself in bestowing a memento of esteem as much beyond the deserts of the man as its early plaudits exceeded the merits of the boy.

"If, in the course of a career by you made both pleasant and prosperous, I have appropriated a portion of your bounty to the encouragement of dramatic literature, I have, as it were, acted as your almoner, and have found my reward in the readiness with which you have extended in its support the same cherishing hand that sustained me in my youthful efforts. One of the writers whose services, at my invitation, were given to the drama, after having proved his ability by the production of a play the popularity of which you have not exaggerated, lies in a recent and untimely grave. The other, to whose noble Roman tragedy you have also particularly alluded, is now pursuing a successful career of literature in another land; and it is a source of no little pleasure to think that I have been in some measure instrumental in calling into exercise a mind which, if I do not overestimate its powers, will add a fresh leaf to that unfading chaplet with which Irving and Cooper and Bryant and Halleck, with a few other kindred spirits, have already graced the escutcheon of our country.

"One allusion in your remarks has awakened emotions of the keenest sensibility. It brings home to me more strongly than all the rest how deeply I am indebted to you; for you have not only strewn my own path with flowers, but enabled me to discharge with efficiency the obligations of nature to orphan sisters and a widowed parent. To you I owe it that after a period of adversity I have been permitted to render her latter days pleasant 'and rock the cradle of reposing age.' So far, however, from any compliment being due to me on this score, I may rather chide myself with having fallen short in my filial duties. Yet were it otherwise, how could he be less than a devoted son and affectionate brother who has experienced parental kindness and fraternal friendship from a whole community?

"This token of your regard I need not tell you how dearly I shall prize. I am about to visit foreign lands. In a few months I shall probably behold the tomb of Garrick,—Garrick, the pupil of Johnson, the companion and friend of statesmen and wits,—Garrick, who now sleeps surrounded by the relics of kings and heroes, orators and bards, the magnates of the earth. I shall contemplate the mausoleum which encloses the remains of Talma,—Talma, the familiar friend of him before whom monarchs trembled. I shall tread that classic soil with which is mingled the dust of Roscius,—of Roscius, the preceptor of Cicero, whose voice was lifted for him at the forum and whose tears were shed upon his grave. While I thus behold with feelings of deferential awe the last resting-places of those departed monarchs of the drama, how will my bosom kindle with pride at the reflection that I, so inferior in desert, have yet been honored with a token as proud as ever rewarded their most successful efforts! I shall then look upon this memorial; but, while my eye is riveted within its 'golden round,' my mind will travel back to this scene and this hour, and my heart be with you in my native land.

"Mr. President, in conclusion, let me express my grateful sense of your goodness by proposing as a sentiment,—

"The Citizens of New York—Distinguished not more by intelligence, enterprise, and integrity than by that generous and noble spirit which welcomes the stranger and succors the friendless.

"This speech was delivered with remarkable feeling and dignity, and received the most earnest applause of every one present. The regular toasts were continued.

"3. Talent and Worth—The only stars and garters of our nobility.

"4. Hallam and Henry—The Columbus and Vespucius of the Drama,—who planted its standard in the New World.

"5. Garrick and Kean—The one a fixed and ever-shining light of the stage; the other an erratic star, which dazzled men by its brightness and perplexed them by its wanderings.

"6. Kemble and Talma—Their genius has identified their memory with the undying fame of Shakspeare and Racine.

"7. George Frederick Cooke—A link furnished by the Stage to connect the Old World with the New. Britain nursed his genius, America sepulchres his remains.

"8. The Dramatic Genius of our Country—'The ruddy brightness of its rise gives token of a goodly day.'

"These sentiments having evoked suitable responses, letters were read from the manager of the Park Theatre and a famous American comedian.

"Theatre, July 24, 1834.

"Gentlemen,—I received your kind invitation to the dinner to be given by his friends to Mr. Forrest on Friday, 25th instant, and sincerely regret that professional duties will prevent my having the pleasure of attending it. I regret my absence for more than one reason, as nothing would give me greater pleasure than to witness so gratifying a tribute of respect paid to a man to whom the stage is under so many obligations. I do not allude to his talents, splendid as they are, but to the effect that his exemplary good conduct and uniform respectability of private character must have on the profession. I trust that the honor conferred on Mr. Forrest on that day will induce many of our brethren to follow his example, and serve to convince them that the profession of an actor will never disgrace the professor if the professor does not disgrace the profession.

"With much respect, gentlemen, I remain your obedient servant,

"E. Simpson.

"Jamaica, L.I., 24th July, 1834.

"Gentlemen,—I have the honor of acknowledging your highly flattering invitation to be present at a dinner to be given by the friends of Mr. Forrest on Friday next at the City Hotel, but find to-day that imperative and unalterable circumstances will prevent my being in town; else, be assured, no one would have heartier pleasure in being present on any occasion of paying a tribute of public respect to so estimable a friend and deservedly distinguished an actor as our countryman, Edwin Forrest, Esq.

"Allow me to thank the highly-respected gentlemen you represent, and yourselves individually, for the esteemed compliment extended to me on this interesting and patriotic occasion.

"I have the honor to be, gentlemen, your very obliged servant,

"James H. Hackett.

"Among the numerous volunteer toasts drank in the course of the evening were the following:

"By the President—William Dunlap: to him the American stage owes a threefold debt. Its director, his liberality elevated it into consequence. Its dramatist, his genius peopled it with admired creations. Its historian, he has embalmed the memory of its professors and given permanence to their fame.

"By the First Vice-President—Nature and Art: the stage has united the antipodes of philosophy.

"By the Third Vice-President—The Drama: the handmaid of refinement; may the genius that conceives and the talent that embodies her fair creations blend the dignity of virtue with the allurements of fancy!

"By the Hon. Cornelius W. Lawrence—The Stage: talent may distinguish, but virtue elevates, its professors.

"By Thomas A. Cooper—The Histrionic Art: may it prove triumphant over the attacks of priestcraft and fanaticism!—equally inimical to religion and the stage.

"By Nathaniel Greene, of Boston—A kind welcome and just estimate for foreign talent,—a proud confidence in that of native growth.

"By William Leggett—Shakspeare: a conqueror greater than Alexander. The warrior's victories were bounded by the earth, and he vainly wept for other worlds to conquer. The poet 'exhausted worlds, and then imagined new.'"

The festivities were maintained with the greatest zest till early morning, when the company broke up in unalloyed pleasure, leaving with their guest the recollection of an occasion of the most flattering nature. And shortly afterwards, when he embarked, sixty or seventy of his closest friends went several miles down the harbor in a yacht. Among them were Leggett and Halleck. Leggett, between whom and Forrest had grown a love as ardent and heroic as that of the famed antique examples, threw his arms around him with a tearful "God bless and keep you!" Halleck said, "May you have hundreds of beautiful hours in beautiful places, and come back to us the same as you go away, only enriched!" Forrest replied, pressing his hand, "That is indeed the wish of a poet for his friend. You may be sure when I am at Marathon, at Athens, at Constantinople, I shall often recall your lines on Marco Bozzaris, and be delighted to link with them the memory of this your parting benediction."

His friends did not say good-bye until they had through their spokesman commended him to the special graces of the captain. Then, wishing him a happy voyage, they joined hands, gave him twenty-four cheers, and sailed reluctantly apart, they to their wonted ways, he to a foreign continent.

Leaving him on the deck, with folded arms, his chin on his breast, gazing sadly at the receding West, we will now endeavor to form a just estimate of his acting in his favorite characters at that time. We will try to paint him livingly, just as he was in that fresh period of his popularity and glory, the proud young giant and democrat of the American Stage.