The first class consisted of those who had a personal friendship for him, combined with a strong taste for the drama, and who studied and criticised his efforts in a sympathetic spirit for the purpose of encouraging him and aiding him to improve. Such men as Duane and Chandler and Swift in Philadelphia, Dawson in Cincinnati, Holley at Louisville, Canonge in New Orleans, Leggett and Lawson in New York, and Oakes in Boston, gave him the full benefit of their varied knowledge of human nature, literary art, and dramatic expression. Their censure was unhesitating, their questionings frank, their praise unstinted. Among these friendly critics the name of James Hunter, of Albany, one of the editors of “The Daily Advertiser,” in the important period of young Forrest’s engagement there, deserves to be remembered. He was one of the best critics of that day. He used to sit close to the stage and watch the actor with the keenest scrutiny, not allowing the smallest particular to escape his notice. Then at the end of the play he would in a private interview submit to his protégé the results of his observation, carefully pointing out every fault and indicating the remedy. He lived to see the favorite, who profited so well from his instructions, reach the proudest pitch of success and fame. When Mr. Hunter died, Forrest interrupted an engagement he was filling in a distant city in order to attend the funeral, and followed the remains of his old benefactor to the tomb as one of the chief mourners.
The second class of commenters on the playing of Forrest from whose judgments he received satisfaction and help was composed of that portion of the writers of dramatic criticism for the press who were comparatively competent to the task they undertook. They were men who were neither his friends nor his foes, but impartial judges, who knew what they were writing about and who recorded their honest thoughts in an honorable spirit and a good style. Among the many thousands of articles written on the acting of Forrest during the fifty years of his career there are hundreds written in excellent style, revealing competent knowledge, insight, and sympathy, and marked by an unexceptionable moral tone. They suggest doubts, administer blame, and express admiration, not from caprice or prejudice, but from principle, and with lights and shades varying in accordance with the facts of the case and the truth of the subject. These articles have an interest and a value in the highest degree creditable to their authors, and they go far to redeem the dramatic criticism of our national press from the severe condemnation justly provoked by the greater portion of it. Did space allow, it would be a pleasure to cite full specimens of this better class of dramatic critiques from the collected portfolios left behind him by the departed actor. Enough that he profoundly appreciated them, and that in various directions they did good service in their day.
The third class whose words concerning his performances Forrest gladly heeded were men who simply gave truthful reports of the impressions made on themselves, not professing to sit in judgment or to dogmatize, but honestly declaring what they felt and what they thought. Free from prejudices and perversities, fair average representatives of human nature in its ordinary degrees of power and culture, their experiences under his impersonations, ingenuously expressed, were always interesting and instructive, throwing light on many secrets of cause and effect, on many points of conventional falsity and of natural sincerity, in histrionic portrayals. Often while the newspaper writer who pretends to know the most about the dramatic art is so full of conceit and biases that his verdict on any particular representation has neither weight nor justice, the instincts of the bright-minded and warm-hearted boy or girl, the native intelligence and sympathy of the unsophisticated man or woman, whose soul is all open to the living truth of things, are almost infallible. Nobody knew this better than our tragedian, or was readier to act on it.
The light and joy he drew from these three sets of critics found a heavy counterpoise in the unjust estimates, perverse, exaggerated, malignant, or absurd, of which he was constantly made the subject by five classes of censors. The first were his personal enemies. Among the meaner fry of men who came in contact with him, a multitude hated him from jealousy and envy, from resentment of his independent and uncompromising ways, his refusal to grant them his intimacy or to serve their purposes. They sought to gratify their animosity by backbiting at his reputation, and especially by trying to destroy his professional rank. Year after year they made the columns of many a newspaper groan and reek under the load of their abuse, ranging from envenomed invective to grotesque ridicule. For example, a jocose foe said, in parody of the great Moslem proclamation, “There is but one Bowery, and Hellitisplit is its profit.” And a serious foe said, “Mr. Forrest is an injury to the stage. He is a false leader, an oppression, a bad model, and a corrupter of the popular taste.” A great part of the hostile criticism he suffered may be traced to bitter personal enmity, which had but slight regard to truth or fairness in its attacks on him, whether as man or as player.
The next class of assailants of Forrest in his professional repute were not his personal enemies, but were the tools of the various cliques, cabals, or social castes who had an antipathy for him and for the party to which he belonged. The English interest was especially active and bitter against him after his quarrel with Macready. Some of these writers were wilfully corrupt in their attitude and consciously false in their written estimates. They expressed neither their own feelings nor their own convictions, but merely the passion and policy of their employers. For example, at the time of the death of the tragedian a well-known editor confessed to a friend that some twenty years previously, when he was a reporter, his employer sent him to the theatre to see Forrest play, and with explicit directions to write the severest condemnation he could of the actor. He went accordingly, and made notes for a savage satirical article, although at the moment of his making these notes the tears were streaming down his cheeks, so sincere and so powerful was the representation which he was, against his conscience, preparing to abuse. Much dishonorable work of this kind has been done, and still is done, by men disgracefully connected with the press.
Another set of critics who assailed the acting of Forrest were those whose tastes were repelled by his realistic method and robust energy. He was too vehemently genuine, his art not far enough removed from material reality, to suit their fancy. They demanded a style more graceful, delicate, and free. Under the impulse of their resentful prejudices they overlooked his great merits, depreciated everything he did, angrily denied him his just rank, magnified every fault beyond measure, and maliciously caricatured him. A volume might be filled with articles purely of this description, proceeding from writers whose want of native manliness unfitted them for appreciating the magnificent manliness of his impersonations, and whose offended fastidiousness expressed itself in terms which were an offence to justice.
The fourth class of abusers of Forrest were men who had an instinctive repugnance for the imposing grandeur of the types of character he represented, for the self-sufficing, autocratic power and stateliness of his impersonations. Mean and envious spirits dislike to look up to those higher and stronger than themselves. Those who either never had any romance and reverence or have been disenchanted, feel an especial enmity or incompetent contempt for every one whose character and bearing appeal to those qualities. This disinclination to admire, this wish to look on equals or inferiors alone, is the special vice of a democracy. Demagogues, whether in politics or in letters, are men of torpid imaginations and dry hearts,—slow to worship, quick to sneer. The style of man enacted by Forrest, full of an imperial personality, overswaying all who come near, massive in will, ponderous in movement, volcanic in passion, majestic in poise, was hateful to the cynical critic the petty proportions of whose soul were revealed and rebuked in its presence. He seized the weapon of ridicule to revenge himself on the actor whose grander portrayals angered him instead of aweing or shaming or delighting him. There seems to be among us in America a growing dislike for the contemplation on the stage of the grandest heroism and power, and an increasing fondness for seeing specimens of commonplace or inferiority promotive of amusement. Already in his life Forrest was a sufferer by this degradation of popular taste, and were he now to appear in our theatres he would feel it still more.
The fifth and largest class of writers who assumed to criticise the acting of Forrest was made up of persons professionally connected with the press, whose blundering or extravagant estimates arose rather from their ignorance and utter incompetency for the task they undertook than from a spirit of antipathy or partisanship. The censures and laudations in these notices were the cause of an immense amount of varied mortification, amusement, vexation, and anger, as they came under his eyes. No small portion of the criticisms in the American newspapers on actors, singers, lecturers, and other public characters have been written, and still continue to be written, by uneducated and inexperienced young men scarcely out of their teens, serving an apprenticeship in the art and trade of journalism. With low aims and views, slight literary culture, superficial knowledge of life, a vile contempt for sentiment, a cynical estimate of human nature, equally ready to extol and to denounce for pay, these writers are the nuisance and the scandal of their craft. Were their articles accompanied by their names they would be destitute of weight or mischief; but, published with apparent editorial sanction, they often assume a pernicious importance.
The art of a people expresses the character and aspiration of a people and reacts to develop them. To sit in judgment on it is a high and sacred office, for which none but the most intelligent, refined, and honorable are fit. The praise and blame given to artists play on the living sensibilities of that most sensitive class whose careers are a vital index of the moral state of the community. Yet this momentous office is frequently entrusted to beardless youths, whose chief experience is in dissipation, and who unblushingly sell their pens to the highest bidder. A severe article exposing this abuse appeared in the “Round Table” in 1864, written by the editor, and entitled “Dramatic Critics in New York.” Forrest put it in one of his scrap-books with the endorsement, “How true this is!” Mr. Sedley said, “What dramatic criticism in New York has been the public well know. Its low, egotistic, unfair, malicious character, its blind partialities and undying hates, its brazen ignorance and insulting familiarity, have given it wide notoriety and brought upon it equally wide contempt.”
There is no art which more needs to be criticised than that of criticism itself, because there is none which requires in its votary such varied knowledge and cultivation, and such integrity of mind and purity of motive; because, furthermore, no other art is exposed to such subtle temptations of prejudice and vanity. The critic, in assuming to be a judge, is no exception to other writers. Like them he reveals and betrays himself in what he writes. In dissecting others he lays his own soul bare. In consciously judging them he pronounces unconscious judgment on himself,—in the tenderness or the insensibility, the generosity and candor or the meanness and spite, the knowledge and beauty or the ignorance and foulness, which he expresses. The pen of a base, vindictive critic is a stiletto, a fang, or an anal gland. The pen of a competent and genial critic is the wand of an intellectual Midas turning everything it touches to gold. For such a critic has the true standard of judgment in his knowledge, and, whatever the merit or demerit of the work he estimates, as he points out its conformity with that standard or its departure from it his lucid illustration is always full of instruction and help.