ve
off the stage as upon it, because he was as unaffected and real in
his personality as he was sincere and conscientious in his public
representations, his lovely nature showing through his art in spite of
him. His purpose was to fill the scene and forget himself.

V

The English newspapers accompanied the tidings of Mr. Jefferson's death
with rather sparing estimates of his eminence and his genius, though
his success in London, where he was well known, had been unequivocal.
Indeed, himself, alone with Edwin Booth and Mary Anderson, may be said
to complete the list of those Americans who have attained any real
recognition in the British metropolis. The Times spoke of him as "an
able if not a great actor." If Joseph Jefferson was not a great actor
I should like some competent person to tell me what actor of our time
could be so described.

Two or three of the journals of Paris referred to him as "the American
Coquelin." It had been apter to describe Coquelin as the French
Jefferson. I never saw Frederic Lemaitre. But, him apart, I have seen
all the eccentric comedians, the character actors of the last fifty
years, and, in spell power, in precision and deftness of touch, in
acute, penetrating, all-embracing and all-embodying intelligence and
grasp, I should place Joseph Jefferson easily at their head.

Shakespeare was his Bible. The stage had been his cradle. He continued
all his days a student. In him met the meditative and the observing
faculties. In his love of fishing, his love of painting, his love of
music we see the brooding, contemplative spirit joined to the alert in
mental force and foresight when he addressed himself to the activities
and the objectives of the theater. He was a thorough stage manager,
skillful, patient and upright. His company was his family. He was not
gentler with the children and grandchildren he ultimately drew about
him than he had been with the young men and young women who had preceded
them in his employment and instruction.

He was nowise ashamed of his calling. On the contrary, he was proud
of it. His mother had lived and died an actress. He preferred that his
progeny should follow in the footsteps of their forebears even as he had
done. It is beside the purpose to inquire, as was often done, what might
have happened had he undertaken the highest flights of tragedy; one
might as well discuss the relation of a Dickens to a Shakespeare. Sir
Henry Irving and Sir Charles Wyndh