thing in the nature of
acting which levels all distinctions. And, in fact, who does not
speak indifferently of the Gamester and of Macbeth as fine
stage-performances, and praise the Mrs. Beverley in the same way as
the Lady Macbeth of Mrs. S.? Belvidera, and Calista, and Isabella,
and Euphrasia, are they less liked than Imogen, or than Juliet, or
than Desdemona? Are they not spoken of and remembered in the same
way? Is not the female performer as great (as they call it) in one as
in the other? Did not Garrick shine, and was he not ambitious of
shining, in every drawling tragedy that his wretched day
produced,--the productions of the Hills, and the Murphys, and the
Browns,--and shall he have that honor to dwell in our minds forever
as an inseparable concomitant with Shakspeare? A kindred mind! O who
can read that affecting sonnet of Shakspeare which alludes to his
profession as a player:--

"Oh for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public custom breeds--
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand."--

Or that other confession:--

"Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to thy view,
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear--"

Who can read these instances of jealous self-watchfulness in our
sweet Shakspeare, and dream of any congeniality between him and one
that, by every tradition of him, appears to have been as mere a
player as ever existed; to have had his mind tainted with the lowest
players' vices,--envy and jealousy, and miserable cravings after
applause; one who in the exercise of his profession was jealous even
of the women-performers that stood in his way; a manager full of
managerial tricks and stratagems and finesse; that any resemblance
should be dreamed of between him and Shakspeare,--Shakspeare, who, in
the plenitude and consciousness of his own powers, could with that
noble modesty, which we can neither imitate nor appreciate, express
himself thus of his own sense of his own defects:--

"Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possest;
Desiring _this man's art, and that man's scope_."

I am almost disposed to deny to Garrick the merit of being an admirer
of Shakspeare? A true lover of his excellenc