, vol. iii. p. 7). Of his "Hamlet" she says,
"To my mind he is without grace and without elevation of mind, because he never seems to rise with the poet in those sublime passages which abound in Hamlet"
(
ibid.
, p. 9). Miss Berry's criticism is supported by good authority. Lewes (
On Actors and the Art of Acting
, pp. 6, 11), while calling him "a consummate master of passionate expression," denies his capacity for representing "the intellectual side of heroism."
Kean preferred the Coal-Hole Tavern in the Strand, and the society of the Wolf Club, to Lord Holland's dinner-parties. Though he never fell so low as Cooke, his recklessness, irregularities, eccentricities, and habits of drinking, in spite of the large sums of money that passed through his hands, made his closing days neither prosperous nor reputable.
Such effect had the passionate energy of Kean's acting on Byron's mind, that, once, in seeing him play "Sir Giles Overreach," he was so affected as to be seized with a sort of convulsive fit. Some years later, in Italy, when the representation of Alfieri's tragedy of
Mirra