hy was the loneliness of
beneficent intellectual grandeur, isolated by its supremacy and pathetic
in its isolation. He loved the character of Richelieu, and if he had
acted Becket, as he purposed to do, in Tennyson's tragedy, he would have
presented another and a different type of that same ideal--lonely,
austere, passionate age, defiant of profane authority and protective of
innocent weakness against wicked and cruel strength. His embodiment of
Cassius, with all its intensity of repressed spleen and caustic
malevolence, was softly touched and sweetly ennobled with the majesty of
venerable loneliness,--the bleak light of pathetic sequestration from
human ties, without the forfeiture of human love,--that is the natural
adjunct of intellectual greatness. He loved also the character of
Harebell, because in that he could express his devotion to the
beautiful, the honest impulses of his affectionate heart, and his ideal
of a friendship that is too pure and simple even to dream that such a
thing as guile can exist anywhere in the world. Toward the expression,
under dramatic conditions, of natures such as those, the development of
his acting was steadily directed; and, even if he fell short, in any
degree, of accomplishing all that he purposed, it is certain that his
spirit and his conduct dignified the theatrical profession, strengthened
the stage in the esteem of good men, and cheered the heart and fired the
energy of every sincere artist that came within the reach of his
example. For his own best personal success he required a part in which,
after long repression, the torrent of passion can break loose in a
tumult of frenzy and a wild strain of eloquent words. The terrible
exultation of Cassius, after the fall of Caesar, the ecstasy of Lanciotto
when he first believes himself to be loved by Francesca, the delirium of
Yorick when he can no longer restrain the doubts that madden his jealous
and wounded soul, the rapture of King James over the vindication of his
friend Seyton, whom his suspicions have wronged--those were among his
distinctively great moments, and his image as he was in such moments is
worthy to live among the storied traditions and the bright memories of
the stage.

Censure seems to be easy to most people, and few men are rated at their
full value while they are yet alive. Just as mountains seem more sublime
in the vague and hazy distance, so a noble mind looms grandly through
the dusk of death. So it will be