drama. To a complete and vital civilization | it is essential that no province of art should lie fallow and unproductive. If it be desirable that the thought of every age should be embodied in words, colors, marble, or bronze -if it be important that our material progress should be accompanied by a corresponding moral and intellectual development,-not less desirable and important is it that the drama, which claims from all the arts "suit and service" in their turn, should retain its station among the educational instruments of the age.

But without a great school of actors the drama itself necessarily pines and dwindles. Men capable of casting their thoughts into dramatic forms, will not be at the pains to write when none are competent to embody them worthily; and the more cultivated and critical portion of the public abandon the theatre to those who are content with rant, buffoonery, spectacle, and burlesque. That we have still some actors who do honor to their art, and still some authors to supply them with plays worthy to outlive the present, is rather a proof that the ancient spirit is not wholly dead, than of the existence of a generally sound condition of the drama itself. A brief account of one who inherited and transmitted a great name may, in some measure, illustrate the causes of the former high estate and the present comparative decline of the histrionic art among us.

The youngest, by nearly twenty years, of a family who for almost three generations formed the central group of all that was excellent on the stage, Charles Kemble was indebted for his eventual position as much to the discipline he underwent, as to the dramatic powers which he shared or inherited. Nature had been bountiful to him in its gifts: his form was noble, his features classical and expressive, his voice, although not strong, remarkably melodious. But it was the diligent cultivation of these gifts which finally earned and secured for him his later and mature fame. His brother-who, from the difference of their years, stood to him also in loco parentis-knew well that there is no royal road to histrionic excellence. Hence he imposed upon the young débutante a bation as strict and regular as he was in the habit of prescribing to the least gifted of his associates. Charles Kemble was for some years an actor of third and fourth-rate parts, both in public and professional estimation, and for many more was intrusted with only secondary characters. Nor was he an actor who rose rapidly in public favor. The public

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compared him unfairly with his elders; they expected from the incepting the completeness of the matured actor. The press, which he never courted, repaid his indifference with occasional hostility or general silence. He had no declamatory tricks to catch the unwary; he never condescended to play at either pit or gallery. And the audience of those days was not easily contented. Nightly in the habit of witnessing performances of a high order, their demands were high on all who aspired to win their favor. There was, indeed, less smart newspaper criticism in those days; but there was instead of it a more competent and formidable bench of judges in the pit and boxes to probe and admonish the actor. The audiences of that period came with comparatively fresh emotions to the theatre. Their sensations had not been blunted by the semi-dramatic excitement of Byron's poems or Scott's tales. The novel of that time did not anticipate the business of the scene. Neither had the men and women of that time, artificial as were their manners in many respects, reached that morbid condition of civilization which now renders the indulgence or expression of feeling in public little short of a social crime. They went to the theatres to be moved, and they required that the actor should be able to open the sources of their mirth or sorrow. They met him half-way, but they expected that on his part he should be able to evoke the sympathy which they were ready to afford. Nor, at the time when John Kemble and Mrs. Siddons were in the zenith of their fame, did spectators flock to the theatre merely to be moved or amused. The stage was looked upon as a school of manners, and as the most intellectual of all entertainments. Orators, artists, men of wit and men of fashion then resorted to Covent-garden or Drury-lane as they now flock to the Opera. To canvass the merits and to attend the representations of English actors was not then considered a token of inferior breeding. It was as legitimate to profess admiration of Shakspeare and Jonson as now of Rossini or Donizetti. Nous avons changé tout celawith what profit appears from the present condition of the English stage.

In such a period as we have sketched, Charles Kemble served his apprenticeship. Behind the curtain, his discipline was severe; before it, his judges were exacting. Bat there was a further cause of his final excellence-a cause which hardly survives in the present day. If we compare a sheaf of playbills fifty years old with the present an

nouncements of the theatre, we shall find that, in the one case, there was a constant repetition of established dramas, in the other, there is a rapid succession of novelties. If we examine these documents more minutely, we shall discover, also, that, while the scenepainter and the upholsterer are now at least as important personages as the performers, then the main burden of the play lay on the actors' shoulders. Now the effect of repeating accredited dramas was to render the performer more skilful, to improve his manipulation of character, to concentrate his attention upon the details of his art. To make up for the superficial attractions of novelty, he was compelled to give a higher finish to his habitual impersonations. Whatever may have been the demerits of theatrical monopoly, it possessed this inestimable advantage to the actors. They played better individually and collectively. They were animated by a common spirit, and by an emulation not always ungenerous. To sustain the character of the house was no unusual or unworthy ambition.

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It appears to us, moreover, that the elder actors proposed to themselves a different, and, in some respects, a higher standard of art, than prevails among their present representatives. They may have been more nered," for the age to which they played was more precise and formal. This, however, was an accident of their generation, balanced by other and perhaps less artistic peculiarities in our own. We believe the elder school to have been more ideal. They held fast at least one principle of art of the highest value and moment. They were not content with a succession of fragmentary efforts; they aimed at unity of effect; they were not disposed to accept of occasional bursts of passion as a compensation for the neglect of the harmony and repose which enter so largely into every genuine work of art. They estimated the performance on the stage rather by its total veracity than by its spasmodic and irregular strength-even as they would have preferred the chastised grace of Reynolds to the exuberant and capricious fancy of Turner.

There may have been somewhat too much of system, too elaborate a display of art, in the declamation of John Kemble; and we, whose ears are unused to such modulations, and inured, if not reconciled, to the harsh and broken tones of modern elocution, should very possibly be affected with a feeling of surprise if we heard Hamlet or Macbeth so intoned. Be this as it may, the art of reciting blank verse and dramatic dialogue

generally is among the lost arts of the stage, and has been supplanted by a trick of enunciation that relieves the dramatic poet from any obligation to write in poetic measures. Throughout his career, Charles Kemble reflected the influences of his early discipline. He was, in the first place, a veracious actor, neither adding to nor falling short of the conceptions of his author. He was, moreover, a most industrious and painstaking actor, thinking nothing done while aught remained to do; inspired with a high ideal, assiduously striving to reach it, and probably in his own conception-for such are the feelings of every genuine artist-never wholly attaining it. He loved his vocation with all his mind and with all his strength. He was not one of those actors who regard their efforts as task-work, and rejoice when the mask is laid aside. He highly rated his profession, as one ministering to the intellect and the heart of man-as at once the mirror and the auxiliary of the poet, the painter, and the sculptor. All his opportunities were made subservient to it-his reading, his travels, his observation of man and man's works, of society, of nature, of contemporary actors, native and foreign. In all respects, the work he had in hand he wrought diligently. He had none of the petty jealousies of his profession. At the zenith of his reputation he would undertake characters which inferior actors would have declined as derogatory. He envied no one; he supplanted and impeded no one. For his art he was often jealous-never for himself. He possessed, in an eminent degree, the love of excellence; but he was no seeker of preeminence. Stanch in maintaining his opinions as to the proper scope and import of acting, he was tolerant of opposition, and prompt in discovering and acknowledging me it in others.

His career as an actor began in one generation, and terminated in another. It commenced at Sheffield in 1792, and closed at Covent Garden Theatre in 1840. During that period revolutions took place, both in social life and in literature, which directly and in various ways affected both the form and substance of the drama. Within the first twenty years of the present century a new literature arose-a literature which differed essentially from that of either the sixteenth or the eighteenth centuries. The wits of Queen Anne's reign would have deemed the productions of Byron and Scott as a recurrence to the earlier and ruder periods of Elizabeth; the Elizabethan poets would have regarded them as deficient in earnest

ness and erudition. As a satirist, Byron might have won the applause of Dryden and Pope, and Addison have written a Spectator upon the poetical descriptions in Childe Harold. As a novelist, Scott might have ranked with Defoe, and as a poet, with Davenant; but the age which admired the Grand Cyrus and Claelia would have had little relish for Waverley and the Heart of Mid-Lothian. The influence of both these poets was unfavorable to the drama. They supplied the public with sufficient theatrical excitement at the fireside, and weaned them from the theatre by embodying in their writings scenes and sentiments hitherto monopolized by the stage.

They were not the only, and perhaps not the greatest poets of their age; but they were the leaders in a species of literature which more than any other has proved prejudicial to the taste for theatrical entertainments. Shelley, Wordsworth, and Keats, and even Rogers and Campbell, were either too limited in their several influences, or too remote and abstract in their genius to affect materially the public at large; whereas Scott and Byron embraced and commanded a range of sympathies of similar kind, and nearly commensurate with the drama itself. Nor was popular literature the only rival of the theatre. The Continent, long sealed to Englishmen, was, in the fifteenth year of this century, suddenly thrown open to them, and novel forms of art and untried objects of intellectual interest prodigally afforded to the wealthy and refined classes of the community. Beside such attractions the theatre paled and waned. The treasures of statuary, painting, and music, in their native homes, were simultaneously thrown open, and the frequenters of the pit and boxes became travellers by land and sea, and connoisseurs in arts more intellectual and permanent than any theatrical show or any actor's impersonation. Nor must we omit the increased religiosity of the times. Whether abstract scruples against the stage be well-founded or not, this is neither the time nor the place to inquire. But it is certain that the passions and sentiments of the theatre are frequently such as the moralist would discourage; and although the actor may at times be a useful auxiliary to the preacher, yet his text and his doctrines are not necessarily in accordance with those of the pulpit. And thus, at nearly the same period, these counter attractions-literature, foreign travel, and religion-combined their opposite influences against the drama, and drew off from it myriads of votaries.

But in the year 1792 none of these causes

of decline were as yet in operation. Mrs. Siddons, though somewhat past her prime, was still in the full majesty of matronly beauty; and John Kemble stood confessed the legitimate successor of Betterton, Quin, and Barry. Nor, although they were in shape and gesture proudly eminent, were they unsupported. A host of actors, the least accomplished of whom might now be the protagonist of any London theatre, seconded and sustained-on the spear side, Bensley, Holman, the Palmers, and Barrymore-on the spindle side, Mrs. Powell, Mrs. Crawford, Miss Brunton, &c. In this most high and palmy state of the drama, and before audiences at once susceptible of emotion and skilful in judgment, the younger Kemble made his first appearance, in the tragedy of Macbeth, and in the subordinate character of Malcolm.

The earlier impersonations of an actor who rises gradually in his profession are rarely remarked at the time, or remembered afterwards. We have, however, Mr. Boaden's testimony to the "poetry of Charles Kemble's acting" in Guiderius, and his princely demeanor in Malcolm. But it was as the representative of second parts that his powers were first manifested. Those who are old enough to remember the Hamlet, Macbeth, and Coriolanus of his majestic brother; or the Lady Macbeth, Volumnia, and Mrs. Beverley of his matchless sister, will also recall the younger Kemble's chivalrous energy in Macduff, the classical grace of his Aufidius, and the pathos he ingrafted upon Lewson. We do not select these characters as among his best, but merely as illustrations of his powers as an auxiliary to the mature artists of his youthful days. In secondary parts he was indeed at all times unsurpassed, and he continued to perform them long after he occupied the foremost station in the ranks of scenic artists. How full of winning grace and good humor was his Bassanio; how humorous and true his drunken scene in Cassio; how fraught with noble shame after Othello's dismissal of his "officer." He was the only Laertes whom it was endurable to see in collision with Hamlet; the only Cromwell worthy of the tears and favor of Wolsey.

We have great pleasure in calling in the evidence of an excellent judge of acting, to support our own recollections of Charles Kemble.

goer), saw an actor with more buoyancy of spirit I never (says Mr. Robson, in his Old Play

than Charles Kemble; Lewis had wonderful vivacity, airiness, and sparkle, but he was finicking

compared with Charles. Who ever played a drunken gentleman as he did? His efforts to pick up his hat, in Charles Oakley, were the most laughable, the most ridiculous, the most natural, that can be imagined. I have seen him perform the character of Friar Tuck, in a dramatic version of Mr. Peacock's Maid Marian, with such an extraordinary abandonment and gusto, that you were forced back to the "jolly green wood and the forest bramble." He absolutely rollicked through the part, as if he had lived all his life with Robin and his men, quaffing fat ale and devouring venison-pasties. But perhaps his masterpiece in this way was Cassio, the insidious creeping of the "devil" upon his senses; the hilarity of intoxication, the tongue cleaving to the roof of the mouth, and the lips glued together; the confusion, the state of loss of self, if I may so term it, when he received the rebuke of Othello, and the wonderful truthfulness of his getting sober, were beyond description fine, nay, real. No drunken scene I ever saw on a stage was comparable to it.

But the continued labor, the earnest study, and unwearied self-examination pursued for many years, were rewarded by greater achievements than even these, and crowned, at length, with the highest recompense which an actor can receive for his efforts-viz., that after witnessing his performance of particular characters the spectator ever afterwards, even in his solitary studies and remembrances, embodies the poet's creations in the very image of the actor himself. The names of Faulconbridge and Mark Antony instantly evoke the person, the tones, and the look of Charles Kemble. In the one we had before us the express image of the mediæval warrior, in the other, that of the Roman triumvir. His Faulconbridge bore us back to Runnymede and the group of "barons bold" who wrested the "great charter" from the craven John. His Mark Antony transported us to the Forum and the Capitol, to the Xth Legion at Pharsalia, to Alexandrian revels, and to the great Actian triumph. "In such characters we again appeal to the Old Play-goer —" he just hit the difficult mark. He was noble without bluster; self-possessed without apparent effort; energetic without bombast; elegant without conceit."

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With the single exception of Garrick, Charles Kemble played well-we emphasize the word, because other actors whom we have seen, have been ambitious of variety, and imagined they could assume diversified powers when nature had denied them-the widest range of characters on record. If he had no equal in Benedict, neither had he in Jaffier; if his Leon and Don Felix were unsurpassed, so also were his Edgar in Lear,

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and his Leonatus in Cymbeline. He was the most joyous and courteous of Archers, Charles Surfaces, and Rangers. His Jack Absolute was the most gallant of guardsmen; his Colonel Feign well a combination of the best high and the best low comedy, as he successively passed through his various assumptions of the Fop, the Antiquary, the Stockbroker, and the Quaker. In young Mirabel, again, he united the highest comic and tragic powers. In the first four acts, he revelled in youth, high spirit, and lusty bachelorhood: in the last, his scene with the Bravoes and the "Red Burgundy" was for its depth of passion equalled alone by Kean's agony and death in Overreach.

We should exceed our limits without exhausting the list of characters in which Charles Kemble had no equal, and in which, without a combination of the same personal and intellectual qualities, and the same strenuous cultivation of them, we shall never look upon his like again. Slightly changing the arrangement of the words, we take Mr. Hamilton Reynolds' admirable lines as the fittest expression of our conviction, that with Charles Kemble departed from the stage the gentleman of high life, and the representative of the classic or romantic hero:

In his provincial engagements at all times, and latterly on the metropolitan boards, Charles Kemble performed a range of characters for which his talents or his temperament were not so well adapted as for parts of chivalry, sentiment, or comic humor. He played Shylock, Macbeth, and Othello occasionally, but not with the marked success of his Hamlet, Romeo, or Pierre. His performance of this order of characters arose, latterly at least, from the circumstance that he alone, from his position and reputation, was qualified to support in tragedy his accomplished daughter, on whom had descended the mantle of Mrs. Siddons. But whether it proceeded from his theory of art, or from his peculiar idiosyncrasy, Charles Kemble, so excellent in the representation of sentiment, did not in general answer the demands of

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