The central and all-conspicuous merit of Forrest’s rendering of Richelieu was the unfailing felicity of skill with which he kept the unity of the character clear through all the variety of its manifestations. It was a character fixed in its centre but mobile in its exterior, dominated by a magnificent patriotic ambition, open to everything great, tinged with cynicism by bitter experience, if irascible and revengeful yet full of honest human sympathy. He enjoyed circumventing traitors with a finesse keener than their own, and defying enemies with a haughtiness that blasted, while ever and anon gleams of gentle and generous affection lighted up and softened the sombre prominences of a nature formed to mould rugged wills and to rule stormy times.
It is only great actors who are able to make the individuality of a character imperially prominent and absorbing yet at the same time to do equal justice to every universal thought or sentiment occurring in the part. Forrest was remarkable for this supreme excellence. Whenever the author had introduced any idea or passion of especial dignity from the depth of its meaning or the largeness of its scope, he was sure to express it with corresponding emphasis and finish. This makes a dramatic entertainment educational and ennobling no less than pleasurable. When François, starting on an important errand, says, “If I fail?” Richelieu gazes on the boy, while recollections of the marvellous triumphs of his own career flit over his face, and exclaims, with an electric accentuation of surprise and unconquerable assurance,—
“Fail?
In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves
For a bright manhood, there is no such word
As fail!”
When the huge sword of his martial period at Rochelle drops from his grasp, and he is reminded that he has other weapons now, he goes slowly to his desk, the old hand from which the heavy falchion had dropped takes up the light feather, his eyes look into vacancy, the soldier passes into the seer, an indefinable presence of prophecy broods over him, and the meditative exultation of his air and the solemn warmth of his voice make the whole audience thrill as his sculptured syllables fall on their ears:
“True,—this!
Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold