Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected Volume III Part 1

Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected.

by Anna Jameson.

VOL 3.

MRS. SIDDONS

"_Implora pace!_"--She, who upon earth ruled the souls and senses of men, as the moon rules the surge of waters; the acknowledged and liege empress of all the realms of illusion; the crowned queen; the throned muse; the sceptred shadow of departed genius, majesty, and beauty,--supplicates--_Peace!_

What unhallowed work has been going forward in some of the daily papers since this ill.u.s.trious creature has been laid in her quiet unostentatious grave! ay, even before her poor remains were cold!

What pains have been taken to cater trifling scandal for the blind, heartless, gossip-loving vulgar! and to throw round the memory of a woman, whose private life was as irreproachable as her public career was glorious, some ridiculous or unamiable a.s.sociation which should tend to unsphere her from her throne in our imagination, and degrade from her towering pride of place, the heroine of Shakspeare, and the Muse of Tragedy!

That stupid malignity which revels in the martyrdom of fame--which rejoices when, by some approximation of the mean and ludicrous with the beautiful and sublime, it can for a moment bring down the rainbow-like glory in which the fancy invests genius, to the drab-coloured level of mediocrity--is always hateful and contemptible; but in the present case it is something worse; it has a peculiar degree of _cowardly_ injustice.

If some elegant biographer inform us that the same hand which painted the infant Hercules, or Ugolino, or Mrs. Sheridan, half seraph and half saint--could clutch a guinea with satisfaction, or drive a bargain with a footman; if some discreet friend, from the mere love of truth, no doubt, reveal to us the puerile, lamentable frailties of that bright spirit which poured itself forth in torrents of song and pa.s.sion: what then? 'tis pitiful, certainly, wondrous pitiful; but there is no great harm done,--no irremediable injury inflicted; for there stand their works: the poet's immortal page, the painter's breathing canva.s.s witness for them. "Death hath had no power yet upon _their_ beauty"--over them scandal cannot draw her cold slimy finger;--on _them_ calumny cannot breathe her mildew; nor envy wither _them_ with a blast from h.e.l.l. There they stand for ever to confute injustice, to rectify error, to defy malice; to silence, and long outlive the sneer, the lie, the jest, the reproach. But _she_--who was of painters the model, the wonder, the despair;--she, who realised in her own presence and person the poet's divinest dreams and n.o.blest creations;--she, who has enriched our language with a new epithet, and made the word _Siddonian_ synonymous with all we can imagine of feminine grace and grandeur: she has left nothing behind her, but the memory of a great name: she has bequeathed it to our reverence, our grat.i.tude, our charity, and our sympathy; and if it is not to be sacred, I know not what is--or ever will be.

Mrs. Siddons, as an _artist_, presented a singular example of the union of all the faculties, mental and physical, which const.i.tute excellence in her art, directed to the end for which they seemed created. In any other situation or profession, some one or other of her splendid gifts would have been misplaced or dormant. It was her especial good fortune, and not less that of the time in which she lived, that this wonderful combination of mental powers and external graces, was fully and completely developed by the circ.u.mstances in which she was placed.[1]

"With the most commanding beauty of face and form, and varied grace of action; with the most n.o.ble combination of features, and extensive capability of expression in each of them; with an unequalled genius for her art, the utmost patience in study, and the strongest ardour of feeling; there was not a pa.s.sion which she could not delineate; not the nicest shade, not the most delicate modification of pa.s.sion, which she could not seize with philosophical accuracy, and render with such immediate force of nature and truth, as well as precision, that what was the result of profound study and unwearied practice, appeared like sudden inspiration. There was not a height of grandeur to which she could not soar, nor a darkness of misery to which she could not descend; not a chord of feeling, from the sternest to the most delicate, which she could not cause to vibrate at her will. She had reached that point of perfection in art, where it ceases to be art, and becomes a second nature. She had studied most profoundly the powers and capabilities of language; so that the most critical sagacity could not have suggested a delicacy of emphasis, by which the meaning of the author might be more distinctly conveyed, or a shade of intonation by which the sentiment could be more fully, or more faithfully expressed. While other performers of the past or present time, have made approaches to excellence, or attained it now and then, Mrs. Siddons alone was p.r.o.nounced faultless; and, in _her_, the last generation witnessed what we shall not see in ours;--no, nor our children after us;--that amazing union of splendid intellectual powers, with unequalled charms of person, which, in the tragic department of her art, realized the idea of perfection."

Such was the magnificent portrait drawn of Mrs. Siddons twenty years ago; and it will be admitted by those who remember her, and must be believed by those who do not, that in this case, eulogy could not wander into exaggeration, nor enthusiasm be exalted beyond the bounds of truth.

I have heard people most unreasonably surprised or displeased, because this exceeding dignity of demeanour was not confined to the stage, but was carried into private life. Had it been merely conventional,--a thing put on and put off,--it might have been so; but the grandeur of her mind, and the light of her glorious beauty, were not as a diadem and robe for state occasions only; her's was not only dignity of manner and person, it was moral and innate, and, I may add, hereditary. Mrs.

Siddons, with all her graces of form and feature, her magnificence of deportment, her deep-toned, measured voice, and impressive enunciation, was in reality a softened reflection of her more stern, stately, majestic mother, whose genuine loftiness of spirit and of bearing, whose rare beauty, and imperious despotism of character, have often been described to me as absolutely awful,--even her children trembled in her presence.

"All the Kembles," said Sir Thomas Lawrence, "have historical faces;"

and for several generations their minds seem to have been cast in a poetical mould. It has, however, been disputed, whether Mrs. Siddons possessed genius. Whether genius be exclusively defined as the creative and inventive faculty of the soul, or taken, in its usual acceptation, as "a mind of large general faculties, accidentally determined to some particular direction," I think she did possess it in both senses. The grand characteristic of her mind was power, but it was power of a very peculiar kind: it was slowly roused--slowly developed--not easily moved; her perceptions were not rapid, nor her sensations quick; she required time for every thing,--time to think, time to comprehend, time to speak.

There was nothing superficial about her; no vivacity of manner; to petty gossip she would not descend, and evil-speaking she abhorred; she cared not to s.h.i.+ne in general conversation. Like some majestic "Argosie,"

bearing freight of precious metal, she was a-ground and c.u.mbrous and motionless among the shallows of common life; but set her upon the deep waters of poetry and pa.s.sion--there was her element--there was her reign. Ask her an opinion, she could not give it you till she had looked on the subject, and considered it on every side,--then you might trust to it without appeal. Her powers, though not easily put in motion, were directed by an incredible energy; her mind, when called to action, seemed to rear itself up like a great wave of the sea, and roll forwards with an irresistible force. This prodigious intellectual power was one of her chief characteristics. Another was _truth_, which in the human mind is generally allied with power. It is, I think, a mistaken idea, that habits of impersonation on the stage tend to impair the sincerity or the individuality of a character. If any injury is done in this way, it is by the continual and strong excitement of the vanity, the dependence on applause, which in time _may_ certainly corrode away the integrity of the manner, if not of the mind. It is difficult for an admired actress not to be vain, and difficult for a very vain person to be quite unaffected, on or off the stage; it is, however, certain that some of the truest, most natural persons I ever met with in my life, were actresses. In the character of Mrs. Siddons, truth, and a reverence for truth, were commensurate with her vast power: Heaven is not farther removed from earth than she was from falsehood. Allied to this conscientious turn was her love of order. She was extremely punctual in all her arrangements; methodical and exact in every thing she did; circ.u.mstantial and accurate in all she said. In little and in great things, in the very texture and const.i.tution of her mind, she was integrity itself: "It was," (said one of her most intimate friends,) "a mind far above the average standard, not only in ability, but in moral and religious qualities; that these should have exhausted themselves in the world of fiction, may be regretted in reference to her individual happiness, but she certainly exercised, during her _reign_, a most powerful moral influence:--she excited the n.o.bler feelings and higher faculties of every mind which came in contact with her own. I speak with the deepest sense of personal obligation: it was at a very early age that she repeated to me, in a manner and tone which left an indelible impression,

'Sincerity, Thou first of virtues! let no mortal leave Thy onward path,' &c.

and I never knew her to omit an opportunity of making her fine genius minister to piety and virtue." Now what are the bravos of a whole theatre,

"When all the thunder of the pit ascends,"

compared to such praise as this?

"Her mind" (again I am enabled to give the very words of one who knew her well) "was a perfect mirror of the sublime and beautiful; like a lake that reflected only the heavens above, or the summits of the mountains around, nothing below a certain level could appear in it.

The ideal was her vital air. She breathed with difficulty in the atmosphere of this 'working-day world,' and withdrew from it as much as possible. Hence her moral principles were seldom brought to bear upon the actual and ordinary concerns of life. She was rather the a.s.sociate of 'the mighty dead,' than the fellow-creature of the living. To the latter she was known chiefly through others, and often through those who were incapable of reflecting her qualities faithfully, though impressed with the utmost veneration for her genius. In their very anxiety for what they considered her interests, (and of her worldly interests she took _no charge_,) they would in her name authorize prudential arrangements, which gave rise to the suspicion of covetousness, whilst she was sitting rapt in heavenly contemplation. Had she given her mind to the consideration and investigation of relative claims, she might on some occasions have acted differently--or, rather, _she_ would have acted where in fact _others only_ acted: for never, as I have reason to believe, was a case of distress _presented to her_ without her being ready to give even till her 'hand lacked means.' Many of the poor in her neighbourhood were pensioned by her.

"She was credulous--simple--to an extraordinary degree. Profession had, therefore, too much weight with her. She was accustomed to _manifestations_ of the sentiments she excited, and in seeking the demonstration sometimes overlooked the silent reality;--this was a consequence of her profession.

"She was not only exact in the performance of her religious duties; her religion was a pervading sentiment, influencing her to the strictest observance of truth and charity--I mean charity in judging others: the very active and excursive benevolence which

'_Seeks_ the duty, nay, _prevents_ the need,'

would have been incompatible with her toilsome engrossing avocations and with the visionary tendencies of her character. But the visionary has his own sphere of action, and can often touch the master-springs of other minds, so as to give the first impulse to the good deeds flowing from _them_. There are some who can trace back to the sympathies which Mrs. Siddons awakened, their devotedness to the cause of the suffering and oppressed. Faithfully did she perform the part in life which she believed allotted to her; and who may presume to judge that she did not choose the better part?"

The idea that she was a cold woman is eminently false. Her affections, like her intellectual powers, were slow, but tenacious; they enveloped in folds, strong as flesh and blood, those whom she had found worthy and taken to her heart; and her happiness was more entwined with them than those who knew her only in her professional character could have supposed; she would return home from the theatre, every nerve thrilling with the excitement of sympathy, and applause, and admiration, and a cold look or word from her husband has sent her to bed in tears. She had that sure indication of a good heart and a fine mind, an exceeding love for children, and a power to attract and amuse them. It was remarked that her voice always softened in addressing a child. I remember a letter of her's relative to a young mother and her infant, in which, among other tender and playful things, she says, "I wonder whether Lady N---- is as good a talker of baby-nonsense as I flatter myself _I_ am!" A lady who was intimate with her, happening to enter her bedroom early one morning, found her with two of her little grand-children romping on her bed, and playing with the tresses of her long dark hair, which she had let down for their amus.e.m.e.nt. Her own children adored her; her surviving friends refer to her with tenderness, with grat.i.tude, even with tears. I speak here of what I _know_. I have seldom been more touched to the heart than by the perusal of some of her _most_ private letters and notes, which for tenderness of sentiment, genuine feeling, and simple yet forcible expression, could not be surpa.s.sed.[2] Actress though she was, she had no idea of doing any thing for the sake of appearances, or of courting popularity by any means but excellence in her art. She loved the elegances and refinements of life--enjoyed, and freely shared what she had toiled to obtain--and in the earlier part of her career was the frequent victim of her own kind and careless nature. She has been known to give generously, n.o.bly,--to sympathize warmly; but did she deny to greedy selfishness or spendthrift vanity the twentieth demand on her purse or her benevolence? Was she, while absorbed in her poetical, ideal existence, the dupe of exterior shows in judging of character?

Or did she, from total ignorance of, or indifference to, the common-place prejudices, or customary forms of society, unconsciously wound the _amour-propre_ of some shallow flatterer or critic,--or by bringing the gravity and glory of her histrionic impersonations into the frivolities and hard realities of this our world, render herself obnoxious to vulgar ridicule?--then was she made to feel what it is to live in the public eye: then flew round the malignant slander, the vengeful lie, the base sneer, the impertinent misinterpretation of what few could understand and fewer feel! Reach _her_ these libels could not--but sometimes they reached those whose affectionate reverence fenced her round from the rude contact of real life. In some things Mrs. Siddons was like a child.

I have heard anecdotes of her extreme simplicity, which by the force of contrast made me smile--at _them_, not at _her_: who could have laughed at Mrs. Siddons? I should as soon have thought of laughing at the Delphic Sybil.

As an artist, her genius appears to have been slowly developed. She did not, as it has been said of her niece, "spring at once into the chair of the tragic muse;" but toiled her way up to glory and excellence in her profession, through length of time, difficulties, and obstacles innumerable. She was exclusively professional; and all her attainments, and all her powers, seem to have been directed to one end and aim.

Yet I suppose no one would have said of Mrs. Siddons, that she was a "_mere actress_," as it was usually said of Garrick, that he was a "_mere player_;"--the most admirable and versatile actor that ever existed; but still the mere player;--nothing more--nothing better. He does not appear to have had a tincture of that high gentlemanly feeling, that native elevation of character, and general literary taste which strike us in John Kemble and his brother Charles; nor any thing of the splendid imagination, the enthusiasm of art, the personal grace and grandeur, which threw such a glory around Mrs. Siddons. Of John Kemble it might be said,[3] as Dryden said of Harte in his time, that "kings and princes might have come to him, and taken lessons how to comport themselves with dignity." And with the n.o.ble presence of Mrs. Siddons, we a.s.sociated in public and in private, something absolutely awful. We were accustomed to bring her before our fancy as one habitually elevated above the sphere of familiar life,--

"Attired in all the majesty of art-- Crown'd with the rich traditions of a soul That hates to have her dignity profan'd By any relish of an earthly thought."[4]

Who was it?--(I think Northcote the painter,) who said he had seen a group of young ladies of rank, Lady f.a.n.n.ys and Lady Marys, peeping through the half-open door of a room where Mrs. Siddons was sitting, with the same timidity and curiosity as if it had been some preternatural being,--much more than if it had been the queen: which I can easily believe. I remember that the first time I found myself in the same room with Mrs. Siddons, (I was then about twenty,) I gazed on her as I should have gazed at one of the Egyptian pyramids--nay, with a deeper awe, for what is material and physical immensity, compared with moral and poetical grandeur? I was struck with a sensation which made my heart pause, and rendered me dumb for some minutes; and when I was led into conversation with her, my first words came faltering and thick,--which never certainly would have been the case in presence of the autocratrix of all the Russias. The greatest, the n.o.blest in the land approached her with a deference not unmingled with a shade of embarra.s.sment, while she stood in regal guise majestic, with the air of one who bestowed and never received honour.[5] Nor was this feeling of her power, which was derived, partly from her own peculiar dignity of deportment, partly from her a.s.sociation with all that was grand, poetical, terrible, confined to those who could appreciate the full measure of her endowments. Every member of that public, whose idol she was, from the greatest down to the meanest, felt it more or less. I knew a poor woman who once went to the house of Mrs. Siddons to be paid by her daughter for some embroidery. Mrs. Siddons happened to be in the room, and the woman perceiving who it was, was so overpowered, that she could not count her money, and scarcely dared to draw her breath. "And when I went away, ma'am," added she, in describing her own sensations, "I walked all the way down the street, feeling myself a great deal taller." This was the same unconscious feeling of the sublime, which made Bouchardon say that, after reading the Iliad, he fancied himself seven feet high.

She modelled very beautifully, and in this talent, which was in a manner intuitive, she displayed a creative as well as an imitative power.

Might we not say that in the peculiar character of her genius--in the combination of the _very_ real with the _very_ ideal, of the demonstrative and the visionary, of vastness and symmetry, of the ma.s.sive material and the grand unearthly forms into which it shaped itself--there was something a.n.a.logous to sculpture? At all events, it is the opinion of many who knew her, that if she had not been a great actress she would have devoted herself to sculpture. She was never so happy as when occupied with her modelling tools; she would stand at her work eight hours together, scarcely turning her head. Music she pa.s.sionately loved: in her younger days her voice in singing was exquisitely sweet and flexible. She would sometimes compose verses, and sing them to an extemporaneous air; but I believe she did not perform on any instrument.

To complete this sketch I shall add an outline of her professional life.

Mrs. Siddons was born in 1755. She might be said, almost without metaphor, to have been "born on the stage." All the family, I believe, for two or three generations, had been players. In her early life she endured many vicissitudes, and was acquainted with misery and hards.h.i.+p in many repulsive forms. On this subject she had none of the pride of a little mind; but alluded to her former situation with perfect simplicity. The description in Mrs. Inchbald's Memoirs of "Mrs. Siddons singing and mending her children's clothes," is from the life, and charming as well as touching, when we consider her peculiar character and her subsequent destinies. She was in her twenty-first year when she made her first attempt in London, (for it was but an attempt,) in the character of Portia. She also appeared as Lady Anne in Richard III. and in comedy as Mrs. Strickland to Garrick's Ranger. She was not successful: Garrick is said to have been jealous of her rising powers: the public did not discover in her the future tragic muse, and for herself--"She felt that she was greater than she knew." She returned to her provincial career; she spent seven years in patient study, in reflection, in contemplation, and in mastering the practical part of her profession; and then she returned at the age of twenty-eight, and burst upon the world in the prime of her beauty and transcendent powers, with all the attributes of confirmed and acknowledged excellence.

It appears that, in her first season, she did not play one of Shakspeare's characters: she performed Isabella, Euphrasia, Jane Sh.o.r.e, Calista, and Zara. In a visit she paid to Dr. Johnson, at the conclusion of the season, she informed him that it was her intention, the following year, to bring out some of Shakspeare's heroines, particularly Katherine of Arragon, to which she _then_ gave the preference as a character. Dr.

Johnson agreed with her, and added that, when she played Katherine, he would hobble to the theatre himself to see her; but he did not live to pay her this tribute of admiration. He, however, paid her another not less valuable: describing his visitor after her departure, he said, "she left nothing behind her to be censured or despised; neither praise nor money, those two powerful corrupters of mankind, seem to have depraved her."[6] In this interview she seems to have pleased the old critic and moralist, who was also a severe and acute judge of human nature, and not inclined to judge favourably of actresses, by the union of modesty with native dignity which at all times distinguished her;--a rare union! and most delightful in those who are the objects of the public gaze, and when the popular enthusiasm is still in all its first intoxicating effervescence.

The first of Shakspeare's characters which Mrs. Siddons performed was Isabella, in Measure for Measure, (1784,) and the next Constance. In the same year Sir Joshua painted her as the tragic Muse.[7] With what a deep interest shall we now visit this her true apotheosis,--now that it has received its last consecration! The rest of Shakspeare's characters followed in this order: Lady Macbeth in 1785, and, soon afterwards, as if by way of contrast, Desdemona, Ophelia, Rosalind. In 1786 she played Imogen; in 1788 Katherine of Arragon; and, in 1789, Volumnia; and in the same season she played Juliet, being then in her thirty-fifth year,--too old for Juliet; nor did this ever become one of her popular parts; she left it to her niece to identify herself for ever with the poetry and sensibility, the youthful grace and fervid pa.s.sion of Shakspeare's Juliet; and we have as little chance of ever seeing such another Juliet as f.a.n.n.y Kemble, as of ever seeing such another Lady Macbeth as her magnificent aunt.

A good critic, who was also a great admirer of Mrs. Siddons, a.s.serts that there must be something in acting which levels all poetical distinctions, since people talked in the same breath of her Lady Macbeth and Mrs. Beverley as being equally "fine pieces of acting." I think he is mistaken. No one--no one at least but the most vulgar part of her audience--ever equalized these two characters, even as pieces of acting; or imagined for a moment that the same degree of talent which sufficed to represent Mrs. Beverley could have grasped the towering grandeur of such a character as Lady Macbeth;--dived into its profound and gloomy depths--seized and reflected its wonderful gradations--displayed its magnificence--developed its beauties, and revealed its terrors: no such thing. She might have drawn more tears in Isabella than in Constance--thrown more young ladies into hysterics in Belvidera than in Katherine of Arragon; but all with whom I have conversed on the subject of Mrs. Siddons, are agreed in this;--that her finest characters, as pieces of art, were those which afforded the fullest scope for her powers, and contained in themselves the largest materials in poetry, grandeur, and pa.s.sion: consequently, that her Constance, Katherine of Arragon, Volumnia, Hermione, and Lady Macbeth stood pre-eminent. In playing Jane de Montfort, in Joanna Baillie's tragedy, her audience almost lost the sense of impersonation in the feeling of ident.i.ty.

She _was_ Jane de Montfort--the actress, the woman, the character, blended into each other. It is a mistaken idea that she herself preferred the part of Aspasia (in Rowe's Bajazet) to any of these grand impersonations. She spoke of it as one in which she had produced the most extraordinary effect on the _nerves_ of her audience; and this is true. "I recollect," said a gentleman to me, "being present at one of the last representations of Bajazet: and at the moment when the order is given to strangle Moneses, while Aspasia stands immoveable in front of the stage, I turned my head, unable to endure more, and to my amazement I beheld the whole pit staring ghastly, with upward faces, dilated eyes, and mouths wide open--gasping--fascinated. Nor shall I ever forget the strange effect produced by that sea of human faces, all fixed in one simultaneous expression of stony horror. It realized for a moment the fabled power of the Medusa--it was terrible!"

Of all her great characters, Lord Byron, I believe, preferred Constance, to which she gave the preference herself, and esteemed it the most difficult and the most finished of all her impersonations; but the general opinion stamps her Lady Macbeth as the grandest effort of her art; and therefore, as she was the first in her art, as the _ne plus ultra_ of acting. This at least was the opinion of one who admired her with all the fervour of a kindred genius, and could lavish on her praise of such "rich words composed as made the gift more sweet." Of her Lady Macbeth, he says, "nothing could have been imagined grander,--it was something above nature; it seemed almost as if a being of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow, pa.s.sion emanated from her breast as from a shrine. In coming on in the sleeping scene, her eyes were open, but their sense was shut; she was like a person bewildered: her lips moved involuntarily; all her gestures seemed mechanical--she glided on and off the stage like an apparition. To have seen her in that character was an event in every one's life never to be forgotten."

By profound and incessant study she had brought her conception and representation of this character to such a pitch of perfection that the imagination could conceive of nothing more magnificent or more finished; and yet she has been heard to say, after playing it for thirty years, that she never read over the part without discovering in it something new; nor ever went on the stage to perform it, without spending the whole morning in studying and meditating it, line by line, as intently as if she were about to act it for the first time. In this character she bid farewell to her profession and the public, (June 29th, 1812.) The audience, on this occasion, paid her a singular and touching tribute of respect. On her going off in the sleeping scene, they commanded the curtain to fall, and would not suffer the play to proceed.[8]

The idea that Mrs. Siddons was quite unmoved by the emotions she portrayed--the sorrows and the pa.s.sions she embodied with such inimitable skill and truth, is altogether false. Fine acting may accidentally be mere impulse; it never can be wholly mechanical. To a late period of her life she continued to be strongly, sometimes painfully, excited by her own acting; the part of Constance always affected her powerfully--she invariably left the stage, her face streaming with tears; and after playing Lady Macbeth, she could not sleep: even after reading the play of Macbeth a feverish, wakeful night was generally the consequence.

I am not old enough to remember Mrs. Siddons in her best days; but, judging from my own recollections, I should say that, to hear her _read_ one of Shakspeare's plays, was a higher, a more complete gratification, and a more astonis.h.i.+ng display of her powers than her performance of any single character. On the stage she was the perfect actress; when she was reading Shakspeare, her profound enthusiastic admiration of the poet, and deep insight into his most hidden beauties, made her almost a poetess, or at least, like a priestess, full of the G.o.d of her idolatry. Her whole soul looked out from her regal brow and effulgent eyes; and then her countenance!--the inconceivable flexibility and musical intonations of her voice! there was no got-up illusion here: no scenes--no trickery of the stage; there needed no sceptred pall--no sweeping train, nor any of the gorgeous accompaniments of tragedy:--SHE was Tragedy! When in reading Macbeth she said, "give me the daggers!" they gleamed before our eyes. The witch scenes in the same play she rendered awfully terrific by the magic of looks and tones; she invested the weird sisters with all their own infernal fascinations; they were the serious, poetical, tragical personages which the poet intended them to be, and the wild grotesque horror of their enchantments made the blood curdle. When, in King John, she came to the pa.s.sage beginning--

"If the midnight bell, Did with his iron tongue and brazen note," &c.

I remember I felt every drop of blood pause, and then run backwards through my veins with an overpowering awe and horror. No scenic representation I ever witnessed produced the hundredth part of the effect of her reading Hamlet. This tragedy was the triumph of her art.

Hamlet and his mother, Polonius, Ophelia, were all there before us.

Those who ever heard her give Ophelia's reply to Hamlet,

_Hamlet._ I loved you not.

_Ophelia._ I was the more deceived!