ples; in marked contrast with the winged and balanced brain of Booth. Correspondingly, all records and all reports agree, in representing Kean's performances as fearfully intense, inevitable, aiming to express character by single strokes of overwhelming energy, or heart-broken pathos; and leaving between the strokes wide intervals of dull

ness.

Coleridge said that to see him act, "was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning." John Kemble said, "the little fellow is terribly in earnest." All records All records agree — all but one. Macaulay, in his "History of England," in one of those brief and brilliant episodes which beguile the progress of the story, traces the pedigree of Kean to the Marquis of Halifax- through how many escapades of illegitimacy he does not confess. He says, the Marquis was the progenitor of "that Edmund Kean, who, in our own time, transformed himself so marvelously into Shylock, Iago, and Othello." If this be true, no higher praise could be awarded to any actor. If this be true, then the portraits, and Kemble, and Hazlitt, and Coleridge, and a multitude of contemporary observers now living, are all at fault.

We think it will require something more than the dazzling dogmatism of the English historian, to sustain his position. We think, not that Kean transformed himself into Shylock, Iago, and Othello; but that the actor transformed those characters respectively into Edmund Kean: that is, that he took just those words, and lines, and points, and passages, in the character he was to represent, which he found suited to his genius, and gave them with electric force. His method was limitary. It was analytic and passionate; not, in the highest sense, intellectual and imaginative.

Our final authority is Hazlitt, who has given, in his work on the "English Stage," by far the most thorough exposition of Kean's powers. Hazlitt learnt him by heart. He delved him to the root, and let in on his merits and defects the irradiating and the "insolent light" of a searching criticism. He says, with fine hyperbole, that to see Kean at his best, in Othello, "was one of the consolations of the human mind;" yet is constrained to admit, even in his notice of this play, that "Kean lacked - imagination."

Now this power Booth possessed of a sub

It

tile kind, and in magnificent measure. lent a weird expressiveness to his voice. It atmosphered his most terrific performances with beauty. Booth took up Kean at his best, and carried him further. Booth was Kean, plus the higher imagination. Kean was the intense individual; Booth, the type in the intense individual. To see Booth in his best mood was not "like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning," in which a blinding glare alternates with the fearful suspense of darkness; but rather like reading him by the sunlight of a summer's day, a light which casts deep shadows, gives play to glorious harmonies of color, and shows all objects in vivid life and true relation.

The recorded impression left by Kean on the minds of his reporters and biographers, is of a mighty grasp and overwhelming energy in partial scenes; while Booth is remembered for his sustained and all-related conception of character, intensely realized, it is true, but chiefly marked by those ideal traits, which not only charmed the listener, but accompanied the scholar to his study, and shed a light on the subtlest and the profoundest page of Shakespeare. The imaginative power

was so opulent in Booth, that he multiplied himself into the scene, and abolished the dullness of the other players. Filled with the conception of the supernatural himself, he "shook the superflux to them." In Hamlet, he made the tread and exit of the heaviest "ghost," airier; and in Macbeth, transformed by his presence and action, the three fantastic old women into ministers of fate.

In according to Booth the gift of supreme histrionic power, we do not imply that his performances were faultless; for the faultless performer is simply the correct. We willingly admit that he may have been matched by others, and haply surpassed in all secondary qualities, excepting voice, which illuminate the stage; he holding, beyond rivalry, the single controlling quality of a penetrating, kindling, shaping imagination. Genius can light its own fire; and it is the peculiar property of histrionic genius to cherish, manipulate, and apply the flame. Yet in the finest results of all art there is something independent of the will. Mr. Booth was perhaps the most unequal of all great actors. And this inequality was more sadly manifest towards the latter part of his career. His excellence

was, however, throughout his life, so incalculable and surprising, that one of his very greatest Shakespearean performances took place in the year 1850, during his last engagement in Boston.

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Health, animal spirits, that vigor which comes from just intervals of repose, clearness of voice in our trying climate, and general freshness of the physical man, may all conspire to serve the exacting hour, and yet the spontaneous actor not find himself "i' the vein." The transforming imaginative power on which he relies to identify himself with the dramatic character, may be either sluggish or asleep. The whence and whither of that wind of the spirit, who knoweth? So Mr. Booth, to the casual attendant on his performances, often failed to sustain his great reputation. Only to those who, like ourselves, had waited on them through remunerating years, did the full depth and refinement, the glow and sway of mind he showed, entirely appear. Many a time, when passion and imagination were comparatively wanting, have we admired the subtle intellect of his interpretations; and were, on such occasions, content to follow his lifted and guiding torch,