h Shakspeare is above all others the poet of Nature,
his meaning frequently eludes the dim or vulgar mind, and to be
intelligibly elicited from the stiffness and obscurity which sometimes
injures his language, requires profound consideration. For the minute
investigation requisite for this purpose few men were better qualified
than Mr. Holcroft--few men much more equal to the task of bringing forth
from the rich mine where they lay and purify of their dross the talents
of Mr. Cooper. With an earnestness and indefatigable zeal proportioned
to the object, and which nothing but the most generous friendship could
impel him to employ, Mr. Holcroft gave those powers to the instruction
of our hero, and with such speedy and felicitous effect, that the young
gentleman was, in the course of a few months, considered by his two
friends as perfectly qualified to appear before a London audience in
some of Shakspeare's most important characters. Having been for some
time a successful dramatic writer, Mr. H. enjoyed the ear and confidence
of the managers, and arranged with those of Covent Garden for his
pupil's appearance on that stage. And now the time arrived when his
fortitude was to be rewarded, his sufferings compensated, and his
talents to find their proper levels. His first appearance was in Hamlet,
in which he received unbounded applause. In two or three nights after he
performed the very arduous part of Macbeth to a house so very full as to
occasion an overflow. It is but justice to the Edinburgh and other
provincial managers to observe, that when Mr. Cooper appeared on the
London boards he was greatly improved in his externals. His person had
grown more into masculine bulk and manly shape; his face had become more
marked and expressive, and his voice had swelled into a more full deep
tenor.

The friendship of Mr. Holcroft caused Mr. Cooper to be universally
misjudged. The opposition prints represented him in the most extravagant
terms of eulogy. The government prints ran into the opposite extreme,
and he became at once the idol and the victim of party spirit. Yet such
a reception, by a London audience, was a sufficient pledge of future
success. He was still young, had much to learn in order to reach the
first rank of that profession, and if a real, well-grounded, just fame
had been his object, he ought to have felt that it could only be
attained by perseverance, and by the customary natural gradations. The
London managers off