“Forrest was a great favorite with my wife. She knew him in 1823 and 1824, and, before our marriage, had often witnessed his performances at Lexington when a girl. She well knew the great friendship that united us: hence in referring to our boy and girl days in Lexington, Kentucky, she often speaks of Forrest, and how much he was respected and his company sought by the college boys at Old Transylvania. I have a very fine daguerreotype picture of our friend, and two quite large photographs he sent me through you several years ago. They will be faithfully preserved and handed down to my children and to their children as the picture of a man concerning whom it may well be said, ‘Take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again.’
“All we have left to us, my friend, is to meet and talk over the pleasure we once enjoyed in the company of our friend. He was so full of wit and humor! And how well he told a story! I remember the day, some years back, he and you spent at my house. All my family were present, together with several friends, and he fascinated us all at dinner by his eloquence, and his incidents of foreign travel. How heartily we laughed at the anecdotes which he told with such fine effect! Then we had music at night, and he recited the ‘Idiot Boy,’ to the delight of every one, and it was the ‘witching time of night’ when the company broke up.
“I am very truly your friend and obedient servant,
“James Taylor.”
Alas, how easy it is, and how congenial it seems to be to many, to let down and tarnish the memory of a great man by an estimate in which his vices are magnified and his virtues omitted! So did old Macklin say of David Garrick, “He had a narrow mind, bounded on one side by suspicion, by envy on the other, by avarice in front, by fear in the rear, and with self in the centre.” But against every unkind or demeaning word spoken of the departed Forrest a multitude of facts protest. Two of these may be cited to show the genius he had to make himself loved and admired and remembered.
On receiving intelligence of the death of his benefactor, a literary gentleman who had been tried by severe misfortunes of poverty and blindness and paralysis, and had experienced extreme kindness as well as generous aid at the hands of Forrest, wrote to Oakes a long letter, eloquent with gratitude and admiration, and closing with the poetic acrostic which follows. The writer thoroughly knew and loved the actor both personally and professionally,—a fact that adds value to his eulogistic appreciation:
Ever foremost in histrionic fame,
Death cannot dim the lustre of thy name.
Wondrously bright the record of thy life,
In spite of wrongs that drove thee into strife.