larly, for I am very
doubtful about it myself!" Before that Experimental Reading was half
over, however, all doubt upon the matter was utterly dissipated. In the
powerful effect of it, the murder-scene immeasurably surpassed anything
he had ever achieved before as an impersonator of his own creations. In
its climax, it was as splendid a piece of tragic acting as had for many
years been witnessed.

What, in effect, was Macready's comment upon it some months afterwards,
when, with an especial eye to the great tragedian's opinion, "Sikes and
Nancy" was given at Cheltenham? It was laconic enough, but it afforded a
world of pleasure to the Author-Actor when his old friend--himself the
hero of so many tragic triumphs--summed up his estimate, by saying,
characteristically, "Two Macbeths!"

Four of the imaginary beings of the novel were introduced, or, it should
rather be said, were severally produced before us as actual embodiments.
Occasionally, during one of the earlier scenes, it is true that the
gentle voice of Rose Maylie was audible, while a few impressive words
were spoken there also at intervals by Mr. Brownlow. But, otherwise,
the interlocutors were four, and four only: to wit--Nancy, Bill Sikes,
Morris Bolter, otherwise Noah Claypole, and the Jew Fagin. Than those
same characters no four perhaps in the whole range of fiction could
be more widely contrasted. Yet, widely contrasted, utterly dissimilar,
though they are, in themselves, the extraordinary histrionic powers of
their creator, enabled him to present them to view, with a rapidity
of sequence or alternation, so astonishing in its mingled facility and
precision, that the characters themselves seemed not only to be before
us in the flesh, but sometimes one might almost have said were there
simultaneously. Each in turn as portrayed hy him--meaning portrayed hy
him not simply in the hook hut hy himself in person--was in its way a
finished masterpiece.

Looking at the Author as he himself embodied these creations--Fagin,
the Jew, was there completely, audibly, visibly before us, by a sort
of transformation! Here, in effect--as several years previously in the
midst of his impersonation of Wilmot in Lord Lytton's comedy of Not
so Bad as we Seem, namely, where, in the garret, the young
patrician affects for a while to be Edmund Curll the bookseller--the
impersonator's very stature, each time Fagin opened his lips, seemed
to be changed instantaneously. Whenever he sp