im are inquired into with earnest curiosity and
solicitude.

He who fairly considers the requisites indispensable to a tolerable
actor, will allow that the professors of that art must be persons of
intellectual capacity and personal endowments much superior to the
common herd of mankind. The vivid intelligence, the high animal spirits,
the aspiring temper, and the resolute intrepidity, which impel them to
the stage and support them under its difficulties, are generally
associated with an eccentricity of character and a giddy disregard of
prudential considerations, which generate adventure and chequer their
lives with a greater variety of incidents and whimsical intercourse with
the world than falls to the lot of men of other professions. Hence it
follows that the stage presents the most ample field for the biographer;
and that whether he writes for the instruction or the entertainment of
his readers, he will not be able to find in any other department of
society men whose lives comprise such an interesting variety as the
actors.

In selecting the persons with whose lives it is intended to enrich this
work, the editors find it necessary in the very first instance to depart
from the rule which their original purpose and strict justice, as well
as a due regard to priority, had prescribed to them. The biography of
the deceased Mr. Hallam, as the father of the American stage, no doubt
lays claim to the first place. There were others too, whose priority to
Mr. Cooper cannot be contested; but, as the materials were not to be
immediately had they have been obliged to postpone them.

LIFE OF MR. COOPER.

Mr. Thomas Abthorpe Cooper is the descendant of a very respectable Irish
family, though he was, himself, born in England. His father, doctor
Cooper--a gentleman universally known, and not more known than beloved
and respected by all who have had any intercourse with East Indian
affairs, was a native of Ireland, and after having served his time to
one of the most eminent surgeons in that kingdom, with the reputation of
a young man of genius and great promise, went over to England, in order
to acquire, in the London hospitals, more perfect practical skill in his
business, and to avail himself of the lectures of the principal
professors of surgery and medicine in that metropolis; intending to
return to his native country again, and there practise for life. It
happened with the doctor however, precisely as it does with t