ly,
John Sleeper Clarke, another estimable comedian of the Jefferson family,
has left an impression of how Burke read that one famous line of his. He
has said:

No other actor has ever disturbed the impression that the profound
pathos of Burke's voice, face, and gesture created; it fell upon
the senses like the culmination of all mortal despair, and the
actor's figure, as the low, sweet tones died away, symbolized more
the ruin of the representative of the race than the sufferings of
an individual: his awful loss and loneliness seemed to clothe him
with a supernatural dignity and grandeur which commanded the
sympathy and awe of his audience.

Never, said Clarke, who often played _Seth_ to Burke's _Rip_, was he
disappointed in the poignant reading of that line--so tender, pathetic and
simple that even the actors of his company were affected by it.

However much these various attempts at dramatization may have served their
theatrical purpose, they have all been supplanted in memory by the play as
evolved by Jefferson and Boucicault, who began work upon it in 1861. The
incident told by Jefferson of how he arrived by his decision to play
_Rip_, as his father had done before him, is picturesque. One summer day,
in 1859, he lay in the loft of an old barn, reading the "Life and Letters
of Washington Irving," and his eye fell upon this passage:

September 30, 1858. Mr. Irving came in town, to remain a few days.
In the evening went to Laura Keene's Theatre to see young
Jefferson as _Goldfinch_ in Holcroft's comedy, "The Road to Ruin."
Thought Jefferson, the father, one of the best actors he had ever
seen; and the son reminded him, in look, gesture, size, and
"make," of the father. Had never seen the father in _Goldfinch_,
but was delighted with the son.

This incident undoubtedly whetted the interest of Joseph Jefferson, and he
set about preparing his version. He had played in his half-brother's, and
had probably seen Hackett in Kerr's. All that was needed, therefore, was
to evolve something which would be more ideal, more ample in opportunity
for the exercise of his particular type of genius. So he turned to the
haven at all times of theatrical need, Dion Boucicault, and talked over
with him the ideas that were fulminating in his brain. Clark Davis has
pointed out that in the Jefferson "Rip" the credits should thus be
measured:

Act I.--Burke + Jefferson