66 Sir Squire Bancroft [March 17, 



things, I doubt if even the Bible would quite escape the process. I 

 am told there are spots on the sun. " The web of our life is of a 

 mingled yarn, good and ill together ; our virtues would be proud if 

 our faults whipped them not ; and our vices would despair if they 

 were not cherished by our virtues." Words which remind me that 

 England is not only the mother of the stage, at least in Europe, 

 but the parent of the greatest dramatic writer the world has known; 

 whose glory does not come from that sort of knowledge which 

 teaching can impart, but from that sort of knowledge which no 

 learning can ever teach ; whose commanding power can, alike, trans- 

 port with rapture or enthral with awe ; it is easy to credit the legend 

 that while writing the scene between the Ghost and Hamlet, the poet 

 passed a long night alone in Westminster Abbey ; his name inspires 

 players with lasting gratitude ; for his works have made their craft 

 eternal and they must share the pride I feel to have been what 

 William Shakespeare was — an actor. 



Splendid as is the array which might be drawn from other 

 lands, I contend it would be hard to name finer tragic players than 

 Thomas Betterton, David Garrick, Edmund Kean, and Sarah Sid- 

 dons ; if to that great quartet, I have not added the name of John 

 Philip Kemble, it is only because the palm must be given to his still 

 greater sister. They possessed the power of acting which can so 

 entrance the spectator as to almost turn shadow into substance. 

 Addison said of Betterton : such an actor ought to be recorded with 

 the same respect as Roscius among the Romans. Pope said of 

 Garrick : he never had his equal and would never have a rivaL 

 Byron said of Kean : he was life, nature, truth, without exaggeration 

 or diminution. Talfourd said of Siddons : she was the greatest 

 actress of whom there is any trace in memory. The ashes of Better- 

 ton and Garrick with those of Henderson — only his second as an actor, 

 while as a reader he surpassed him — of the silver-toned Barry, best 

 of all the Romeos, with their gifted sisters in art. Mistress Bracegirdle, 

 Mistress Oldfield, and Mistress Pritchard, rest — if I can correctly 

 remember the words of an eloquent American — in that grandest of 

 mausoleums where the proudest of nations garners the memories of 

 its most honoured children. Yes, there, in the Abbey and its 

 cloisters, alike with Kings and Queens, with warriors and statesmen, 

 with poets and philosophers, with men of science and men of letters, 

 those renowned players are now " such stuff as dreams are made of, 

 and their little life is rounded with a sleep." 



** Out, out, brief candle ! " 



It is no doubt just that the fame of the great tragedian should 

 eclipse that of the great comedian. The pen held by that lover of 

 the theatre, Leigh Hunt, has truly written on this subject. " Imagi- 

 nation is the test of genius ; that which is done by imagination is 

 more difficult than that which is performed by discernment or experi- 



