As the Hamlet of Rossi is unmistakably mad, so his Macbeth is an undeniable craven and criminal. I can compare this personation to nothing so much as to that of a man haunted by a fiend. For the steps of Macbeth are dogged ever by an unseen devil—namely, his own evil yet coward nature. He is wicked and he is afraid. The whole physique of Rossi in the scene in the first act where the king heaps favors and commendations on his valiant warrior was eloquent of conscious guilt: the constrained attitude, the shifting, uneasy glance, told, louder than words, of a wicked purpose and a stinging conscience. From the moment of the murder the wretched thane lives in a perpetual atmosphere of fear. He is afraid of everything—first of his own unwashed hands, and next of the dead king; then of Banquo and of Banquo's ghost; and finally he is afraid of all the world. It is only at the last that the mere physical courage of the soldier reasserts itself, and Macbeth, driven to bay by Fate, fights with the fierce energy of despair.
As to Rossi's Lear, it is not to be criticised. Words fail when the heartstrings are thrilled to trembling and to tears. The pathos of Lear's recognition of Cordelia was past the power of words to describe. He stands at first gazing in vague bewilderment at the face of his child, then into the darkened and troubled gaze steals anew the light of reason and of recognition: unutterable sorrow, inexpressible remorse, sweep across the quivering features, and with an inarticulate sob Lear would fain sink on his knees at his wronged daughter's feet to pray for pardon. That people rose and left the house in a very passion of tears is the fittest criticism that can be bestowed upon this personation.
The list of the Shakesperian characters closed with Romeo. Rossi was the divinest of lovers, in spite of his forty years and his stalwart proportions, and the balcony scene was an exquisite love-duet that needed not the aid of music to lend it sweetness. But in the Italian version the play was so cut and garbled that there could be little pleasure in listening to it for any one familiar with the original.
Outside of his Shakespearian répertoire, Rossi has appeared in only two plays—the Kean of the elder Dumas, and Nero, a tragedy by Signer Cosso, The first, originally written for Lemaître, is an ill-constructed, improbable melodrama. But it contains one grand scene—namely, that where Kean, whilst playing Hamlet, goes mad upon the stage; and this scene Rossi renders superbly. As to Nero, it is marvelous to witness the complete eclipse of the refined, accomplished gentleman and intellectual actor behind the brutal physiognomy of the wicked emperor. It is Hamlet transformed into a prize-fighter.
In person, Signor Rossi is less strikingly handsome than is his rival, Salvini, but he possesses a singularly attractive and pleasing countenance. He is a Piedmontese, blue-eyed and fair-complexioned, with chestnut hair, the abundant locks of which are just touched with gray. He is tall and finely proportioned, with the chest of a Hercules and the hands and feet of a duchess. Off the stage he is peculiarly pleasing in manner, and is said to be a noble-hearted and generous gentleman, as well as an amiable and genial companion, singularly free from conceit and delighting in his art.
L.H.H.
[BISHOP THIRLWALL'S PRECOCITY.]
We do not remember to have seen in the various notices relative to the late Bishop Connop Thirlwall, the well-known historian, any mention of his precocity, which must have been almost without a parallel. Thirlwall came of a long line of clergymen. His father was chaplain to Dr. Percy (Percy's Reliques), bishop of Dromore, and in 1809 he published some specimens of the early genius of his son under the title of "Primitiæ; or, Essays and Poems on Various Subjects, Religious, Moral and Entertaining. By Connop Thirlwall, eleven years of age. Dedicated by permission to the Bishop of Dromore." In the preface it is stated that at three years old Connop read English so well that he was taught Latin, and at four read Greek with an ease and fluency that astonished all who heard him. An accidental circumstance revealed his talent for composition when he was seven. Mrs. Thirlwall told her elder son, in her husband's absence, to write out his thoughts on a certain subject. Connop asked leave to do the same, and produced to her astonishment the following: "How uncertain is life! for no man can tell in what hour he shall leave the world. What numbers are snatched away in the bloom of youth, and turn the fine expectation of parents into sorrow! All the promising pleasures of this life will fade, and we shall be buried in the dust. God takes away a good prince from his subjects only to transplant him into everlasting joy in heaven. A good man is not dispirited by death, for it only takes him away that he may feel the pleasures of a better world. Death comes unawares, but never takes virtue with it. Edward VI. died in his minority, and disappointed his subjects, to whom he had promised a happy reign." These reflections were probably suggested by some sermon the boy had heard, but the composition is an extraordinary piece of work at such an age.
His effusions are on various themes, and comprise quite a pretty little poem, written when he was eleven, on Tintern Abbey. But perhaps the most remarkable circumstance of all is that this youthful prodigy lived to amply fulfill the promise of his youth, and proved as sagacious and moderate in the use of knowledge as he was marvelous in his powers of acquiring it. There is a remarkable tribute to these powers in John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, where he says: "The speaker with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearly every word he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since bishop of St. David's, then a chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputation for eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he had uttered ten sentences I set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I have never since heard any one whom I placed above him."