Shakespeare foresaw the existence of Miss Ellen Terry when he created Portia, as Sir Walter might that of Miss Neilson when he spake in Kenilworth.
There are who say that Barry Sullivan is the leading legitimate actor of the British stage—a big distinction, which few will, perhaps, be disposed to deny him. But the difference between Sullivan and Irving is, I take it, this: Sullivan has the toga virilis, and the old and obvious canons of his art; Irving is an actor less by tradition than instinct. Sullivan’s rich baritone, with its harmonious and not-without-skill-delivered periods, stirs the whole house like the sound of a trumpet: Irving’s shriller pipe is fuller of Nature’s own rhetoric for a finer few. Sullivan may fill the theatre; Irving may find an empty seat or two in the gallery.
Cyril. (James Silvester.)
LORD MACAULAY.
The Quarterly Review, for April 1868, contained a review of Lady Trevelyan’s edition of the works of Lord Macaulay, in which the following passage was quoted as a specimen of his style:—
“The misgovernment of Charles and James, gross as it had been, had not prevented the common business of life from going steadily and prosperously on. While the honour and independence of the State were sold to a foreign Power, while chartered rights were invaded, while fundamental laws were violated, hundreds of thousands of quiet, honest, and industrious families laboured and traded, ate their meals and lay down to rest, in comfort and security. Whether Whig or Tories, Protestants or Jesuits were uppermost, the grazier drove his beasts to market; the grocer weighed out his currants; the draper measured out his broadcloth; the hum of buyers and sellers was as loud as ever in the towns; the harvest-home was celebrated as joyously as ever in the hamlets; the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire; the apple juice foamed in the presses of Herefordshire; the piles of crockery glowed in the furnaces of the Trent; and the barrows of coal rolled fast along the timber railways of the Tyne.”—(Vol. iv. p. 189.)
There is no reason why this rhetorical diarrhœa should ever stop so long as there was a trade, calling, or occupation to be particularised: the pith of the proposition (which required no proof) being contained in the first sentence. Why not continue thus:—
“The apothecary vended his drugs as usual; the poulterer crammed his turkeys; the fishmonger skinned his eels: the wine-merchant adulterated his port; as many hot-cross buns as ever were eaten on Good Friday, as many pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, as many Christmas-pies on Christmas-day; on area steps the domestic drudge took in her daily pennyworth of the chalky mixture which Londoners call milk; through area bars the feline tribe, vigilant as ever, watched the arrival of the cats’-meat man; the painted courtesan flaunted in the Haymarket; the cabs rattled through the Strand; and from the suburban regions of Fulham and Putney the cart of the market-gardener wended its slow and midnight way along Piccadilly to deposit its load of cabbages and turnips in Covent Garden.”
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