“The articles complained of were, we frankly admit, beyond the limits of dramatic criticism; and the present proprietors, who saw them for the first time when printed, were at the time and still are sincerely sorry they appeared. Though not personally acquainted with Mr. Forrest, we do know, what the world knows, that he has always been prompt and faithful in his professional engagements; and his bitterest enemies, if he have any, must admit that he is not only eminent in his profession but especially free from the vice of intemperance.”
The newspaper attack from which he suffered the most was so peculiar in some of its features as to demand mention. In 1855 a series of elaborate critiques on his chief rôles appeared in a leading metropolitan journal. They were so scholarly, careful, and strong in their analysis of the plays, and so cutting in their strictures on the player, that they attracted wide attention and did him much damage. Now, two hands were concerned in these articles. The learning, thought, and eloquence were furnished by a German of uncommon scholarship and talent, who deeply felt the power and merit of Forrest as an actor and considered him a man of accomplished dramatic genius. The articles, as he wrote them, were then padded with demeaning epithets and scurrilous estimates of Forrest by one who was filled with prejudices theoretical and personal. Could Forrest have totally disregarded the articles, fortified in a magnanimous serenity, it had been well. He could not do it. He took them home with extreme pain and with extreme wrath, intensely resenting their injustice and their unkindness. This is a specimen of what is inflicted and suffered in the battle of public life. It tempts one to say, Blessed is the man who escapes all publicity, and lives and loves and dies happily in private! No doubt, however, it is best to say, with the grand old Faliero,—
“I will be what I should be, or be nothing.”
His long, crowded experience of unfairness and unkindness deposited in Forrest a burning grudge against the world, a fierce animosity towards his injurers, an angry recoil of self-esteem, and a morbid exaggeration of the real vices of society. In one of his letters to a friend he writes, “This human life is a wretched failure, and the sooner annihilation comes to it the better.” An old poet makes one of his characters who had been deeply wronged say,—
“I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,
For grief is proud and makes his owner stout.”
Mrs. Montagu wrote to John Philip Kemble under similar circumstances, “If you retire, from an opinion that mankind are insincere, ungrateful, and malignant, you will grow proud by reflecting that you are not like these Pharisees.” How such an opinion in Forrest marred his peace of mind and rankled in his general feelings—although much kindliness to men and much enjoyment of life still remained—was obvious enough in his later years, and is vividly expressed in many of his letters. “It would amaze and shock the honest, upright people of this country,” he writes, “could they but know as I do how these sage judges, these benign law-peddlers, are manipulated by outsiders to give any decree that malice and money may demand.” Again he writes, “I have all my life been cheated and preyed on by harpies, right and left. While they have enjoyed my money and maligned me I have toiled on for the next batch of swindlers. I have squandered more than a quarter of a million dollars on friends who, with a few noble exceptions, have returned my kindness not only with ingratitude but with obloquy.” And at another time he says still more at length, “Whatever my enemies may say of me—be it good or bad—matters but little. I would not buy their mercy at the price of one fair word. I claim no exemption from the infirmities of my temper, which are doubtless many. But I would not exchange the honest vices of my blood for the nefarious hypocrisies and assumed virtues of my malignant detractors. I am no canting religionist, and I cordially hate those who have wronged and backbitten me. I have—yes, let me own that I have—a religion of hate; not of revenge, for while I detest I would not injure. I have a hatred of oppression in whatever shape it may appear,—a hatred of hypocrisy, falsehood, and injustice,—a hatred of bad and wicked men and women,—and a hatred of my enemies, for whom I have no forgiveness excepting through their own repentance of the injuries they have done me. I have never flattered the blown-up fool above me nor crushed the wretch beneath me.
“‘I have not caused the widow’s tear,
Nor dimmed the orphan’s eye;
I have not stained the virgin years,