Transcriber's Note:

The tables of contents and steel plates reflect future volumes.

See end of text for further notes.

EDWIN FORREST.
ÆT 45

LIFE
OF
EDWIN FORREST,
THE AMERICAN TRAGEDIAN.

BY

WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER.

"All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players."

VOLUME I.

PHILADELPHIA:

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.

1877.

Copyright, 1877, by J. B. Lippincott & Co.

TO
JAMES OAKES,
THE
TRUE PYTHIAS
IN THE REAL LIFE OF THIS
DAMON,
THE FOLLOWING BIOGRAPHY
IS INSCRIBED.

PREFATORY NOTE.

The Author of the following work apologizes for the delay of its publication on the ground of long-continued ill health which unfitted him for mental labor. He has tried to make amends by sparing no pains in his effort to do justice to the subjects treated. The plan of the ensuing biography is that of a philosophical history, which adds to the simple narrative of events a discussion of the causes and teachings of the events. The writer has interspersed the mere recital of personal facts and incidents with studies of the principal topics of a more general nature intimately associated with these, and has sought to enforce the lessons they yield. His aim in this has been to add to the descriptive interest of the work more important moral values. The thoughtful reader, who seeks improvement and is interested in the fortunes of his kind, will, it is believed, find these episodes attractive; and the frivolous reader, who seeks amusement alone, need not complain of disquisitions which he can easily skip.

The author foresees that some opinions advanced will be met with prejudice and disfavor, perhaps with angry abuse. But as he has written in disinterested loyalty to truth and humanity, attacking no entrenched notion and advocating no revolutionary one except from a sense of duty and in the hope of doing a service, he will calmly accept whatever odium the firm statement of his honest convictions may bring. Society in the present phase of civilization is full of tyrannical errors and wrongs against which most persons are afraid even so much as to whisper. To remove these obstructive evils, and exert an influence to hasten the period of universal justice and good will for which the world sighs, men of a free and enlightened spirit must fearlessly express their thoughts and breathe their philanthropic desires into the atmosphere. If their motives are pure and their views correct, however much a prejudiced public opinion may be offended and stung to assail them, after a little while their valor will be applauded and their names shine out untarnished by the passing breath of obloquy. It is, Goethe said, with true opinions courageously uttered as with pawns first advanced on the chess-board: they may be beaten, but they have inaugurated a game which must be won.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF STEEL PLATES.

The engravings of Mr. Forrest in character are after photographs by Brady.

LIFE OF EDWIN FORREST.

CHAPTER I.

PRELUDE.

Edwin Forrest has good claims for a biography. The world, it has been said, is annually inundated with an intolerable flood of lives of nobodies. So much the stronger motive, then, for presenting the life of one who was an emphatic somebody. There is no more wholesome or more fascinating exercise for our faculties than in a wise and liberal spirit to contemplate the career of a gifted and conspicuous person who has lived largely and deeply and shown bold and exalted qualities. To analyze his experience, study the pictures of his deeds, and estimate his character by a free and universal standard, is one of the fittest and finest tasks to which we can be summoned. To do this with assimilating sympathy and impartial temper, stooping to no meaner considerations than the good and evil, the baseness and grandeur of man as man, requires a degree of freedom from narrow distastes, class and local biases, but rarely attained. Every effort pointing in this direction, every biographic essay characterized by a full human tone or true catholicity, promises to be of service, and thus carries its own justification. The habit of esteeming and censuring men in this generous human fashion, uninfluenced by any sectarian or partisan motive, unswayed by any clique or caste, is one of the ripest results of intellectual and moral culture. It implies that fusion of wisdom and charity which alone issues in a grand justice. One of the commonest evils among men is an undue sympathy for the styles of character and modes of life most familiar to them or like their own, with an undue antipathy for those unfamiliar to them or unlike their own. It is a duty and a privilege to outgrow this low and poor limitation by cultivating a more liberal range of appreciation.

There is still lingering in many minds, especially in the so-called religious world, a strong prejudice against the dramatic profession. Analyzed down to its origin, the long warfare of church and theatre, the instinctive aversion of priest and player, will be found to be rooted in the essential opposition of their respective ideals of life. The ecclesiastical ideal is ascetic, its method painful obedience and prayer, its chief virtues self-restraint and denial; the dramatic ideal is free, its method self-development and culture, its ruling aims gratification and fulfilment The votaries of these distinctive sets of convictions and sentiments have from an early age formed two hostile camps. Accordingly, when one known as a clergyman was said to be writing the life of an actor, the announcement created surprise and curiosity and elicited censorious comment. The question was often asked, how can this strange conjunction be explained? It is therefore, perhaps, not inappropriate for the author of the present work to state the circumstances and motives which caused him to undertake it. The narrative will be brief, and may, with several advantages, take the place of a formal preface. Conventional prefaces are rarely read; but the writer trusts that the statement he proposes to make will be not only interesting to the reader but likewise helpful, by furnishing him with the proper key and cue to the succeeding chapters. It may serve as a sort of preparatory lighting up of the field to be traversed; a kind of prelusive sketch of the provinces of experience to be surveyed, of the lessons to be taught, and of the credentials of the author in the materials and other conditions secured to him for the completion of his task. This statement is to be taken as an explanation, not as an apology. The only justification needed lies in the belief that the theatrical life may be as pure and noble as the ecclesiastical; that the theatre has as sound a claim to support as the church; that the great actor, properly equipped for his work, is the most flexible and comprehensive style of man in the world, master of all types of human nature and all grades of human experience; and that the priestly profession in our day has as much to learn from the histrionic as it has to teach it.

In the winter of 1867, a man of genius, a friend in common between us, having been struck by paralysis and left without support for his family, I encountered James Oakes engaged in the benevolent business of raising funds for the relief of the sufferers from this calamity. Propitious conditions were thus supplied for the beginning of our acquaintance in respect and sympathy. There were characteristic cardinal chords in our breasts which vibrated in unison, and, in consequence, a strong liking sprang up between us.

For forty years James Oakes had been the sworn bosom friend of Edwin Forrest. He regarded him with an admiration and love romantic if not idolatrous. He had, as he said, known him as youth, as man, in all hours, all fortunes; had summered him and wintered him, and for nigh half a century held him locked in the core of his heart, which he opened every day to look in on him there. He resembled him in physical development, in bearing, in unconscious tricks of manner, in tastes and habits. Indeed, so marked were the likeness and assimilation, despite many important differences, that scores of times the sturdy merchant was taken for the tragedian, and their photographs were as often identified with each other.

No one could long be in cordial relations with Oakes and not frequently hear him allude to his distinguished friend and relate anecdotes of him. Besides, I had myself recollections of Forrest warmly attracting me to him. He was one of the first actors I had ever seen on the stage; the very first who had ever electrified and spell-bound me. When a boy of ten years I had seen him in the old National Theatre in Boston in the characters of Rolla, Metamora, and Macbeth. The heroic traits and pomp of the parts, the impassioned energy and vividness of his delineations, the bell, drum, and trumpet qualities of his amazing voice, had thrilled me with emotions never afterwards forgotten. I had also, in later years, often seen him in his best casts. Accordingly, when, on occasion of a visit of Forrest to his friend in Boston in the early autumn of 1868, the offer of a personal interview was given me, I accepted it with alacrity.

There were three of us, and we sat together for hours that flew unmarked. It was a charmed occasion. There was no jar or hindrance, and he without restraint unpacked his soul of its treasures of a lifetime. The great range of experience from which he drew pictures and narratives with a skill so dramatic, the rare ease and force of his conversation, the deep vein of sadness obviously left by his trials, the bright humor with which he so naturally relieved this gloom and vented his heart, the winning confidence and gentleness with which he treated me, no touch or glimpse of anything coarse or imperious perceptible in that genial season,—all drew me to him with unresisted attraction. I seemed to recognize in him the unquestionable signals of an honest and powerful nature, magnanimous, proud, tender, equally intellectual and impassioned, harshly tried by the world yet reaping richly from it, capable of eloquent thoughts and great acts, not less fond and true in friendship than tenacious in enmity, always self-reliant, living from impulses within, and not, like so many persons, on tradition and conventionality.

Such was the beginning of my private acquaintance with Forrest. Between that date and his death I had many meetings and spent considerable time with him. He took me into his confidence, unbosomed himself to me without reserve, recounted the chief incidents of his life, and freely revealed, even as to a father confessor, his inmost opinions, feelings, and secret deeds. The more I learned of the internal facts of his career, and the more thoroughly I mastered his character, constantly reminding one—as his friend Daniel Dougherty suggested—of the character of Guy Darrell in the great novel of Bulwer, the more I saw to respect and love. It is true he had undeniable faults,—defects and excesses which perversely deformed his noble nature,—such as frequent outbreaks of harshness and fierceness, occasional superficial profanity, a vein of unforgiving bitterness, sudden alternations of repulsive stiffness with one and too unrestrained familiarity with another. Still, in his own proper soul, from centre to circumference, undisturbed by collisions, he was grand and sweet. When truly himself, not chafed or crossed, a more interesting man, or a pleasanter, no one need wish to meet.

Oakes had long felt that the life of his friend, so prominent and varied and comprehensive, eminently deserved to be recorded in some full and dignified form. He was seeking for a suitable person to whom to intrust the work. With the assent of Forrest he urged me to assume it. I did not at first accede to the proposal, but took it into consideration, making, meanwhile, a careful study of the subject, and arriving finally at the conclusions which follow.

I found in Edwin Forrest a man who must always live in the history of the stage as the first great original American actor. This place is secured to him by his nativity, the variety, independence, vigor, and impressiveness of his impersonations, the important parts with which he was so long exclusively identified, the extent and duration of his popularity, and the imposing results of his success. Other distinguished actors who have had a brilliant reputation in this country have been immigrants or visitors here, as Cooke, Cooper, Conway, Kean, Booth; or have been eminent only in some special part, as Marble, Hackett, Setchell, Jefferson; or have enjoyed but a local celebrity, as Burton, Warren, and others. But Forrest, home-born on our soil, intensely national in every nerve, is indissolubly connected with the early history of the American drama by a career of conspicuous eminence, illustrated in a score of the greatest characters, and reaching through fifty years. During this prolonged period his massive physique, his powerful personality, his electrifying energy, his uncompromising honesty and frankness, his wealth, the controversies that raged around him, the unhappy publicity of his domestic misfortune, and other circumstances of various kinds, combined, by means of the newspapers, pamphlets, pictures, statuettes, caricatures, to make him a familiar presence in every part of the country. Therefore, whatever differences there may have been in the critical estimates of the rank of his particular presentments or of his general style of acting, it is impossible to deny him his historic place as the first great representative American actor. He likewise deserves this place, as will hereafter be recognized, by his pronounced originality as the founder of a school of acting—the American School—which combined, in a manner without any prominent precedent, the romantic and the classic style, the physical fire and energy of the melodramatic school with the repose and elaborate painting of the artistic school.

It cannot be fairly thought that the great place and fame of Forrest are accidental. Such achievements as he compassed are not adventitious products of luck or caprice, but are the general measure of worth and fitness. Otherwise, why did they not happen as well to others among the hundreds of competitors who contended with him at every step for the same prizes, but were all left behind in the open race? If mere brawniness, strutting, rant, purchased favor, and clap-trap could command such an immense and sustained triumph, why did they not yield it in other cases, since there were not at any time wanting numerous and accomplished professors of these arts? A wide, solid, and permanent reputation, such as crowned the career of Forrest, is obtained only by substantial merit of some kind. The price paid is commensurate with the value received.

The common mass of the community may not be able to judge of the supreme niceties of merit in the different provinces of art, to appreciate the finest qualities and strokes of genius, and award their plaudits and laurels with that exact justice which will stand as the impartial verdict of posterity. In these respects their decisions are often as erroneous as they are careless and fickle; and competent judges, trained in critical knowledge, skilled by long experience to detect the minutest shades of truth and falsehood, beauty and ugliness, desert and blameworthiness, will not hesitate to overrule the passing partialities of the contemporary crowd, and rectify their errors for the record of history. But the multitude are abundantly able—none more so—to respond with admiring interest to the impression of original power, recognize the broad outlines of a sublime and fiery soul, thrill under the general signs of genius, and pay deserved tribute to popular exhibitions of skill. And when this great coveted democratic tribute has been given to a public servant, in an unprecedented degree, for half a century, throughout the whole extent of a nation covering eight millions of square miles and including more than thirty millions of inhabitants, securing him a professional income of from twenty to forty thousand dollars a season, and filling three dozen folio volumes with newspaper and magazine cuttings composed of biographic sketches of him and critical notices of his performances,—to undertake to set aside the overwhelming verdict, as deceived and vulgar, is both idle and presumptuous. To account for a career like that of Edwin Forrest it is necessary to admit that he must have embodied force, intellect, passion, culture, and perseverance in a very uncommon degree. And in perceiving and honoring the general evidences of this the great average of the people are better judges, fairer critics, than any special classes or cliques can be; because the former are free from the finical likes and dislikes, the local whims and biases, the envy and squeamishness which prejudice the feelings and corrupt the judgments of the latter.

The historic place and power of Forrest are of themselves one good reason why his life should be fully and fairly written while all the data are within reach. For it can hardly be a matter of doubt that the theatre is destined in future ages to have in this country a rank and a space assigned to it in the education and entertainment of the public such as it has not yet known. The interest in types of human nature, in modes of human life, in all the marvels of the inner world of the soul, will increase with that popular leisure and culture which the multiplication of labor-saving machinery promises to carry to an unknown pitch; and as fast as this interest grows, the estimate of the drama will ascend as the best school for the living illustration of the experience of man. It is not improbable that the scholars and critics of America a hundred or two hundred years hence will be looking back and laboring with a zeal we little dream of now to recover the beginnings of our national stage as seen in its first representatives. For then the theatre, in its splendid public examples and in its innumerable domestic reduplications, will be regarded as the unrivalled educational mirror of humanity.

Of no American actor has there yet been written a biography worthy of the name; though scarcely any other sphere of life is so crowded with adventure, with romance, with every kind of affecting incident, and with striking moral lessons. The theatre is a concentrated nation in itself. It is a moving and illuminated epitome of mankind. It is a condensed and living picture of the ideal world within the real world. It has its old man, its old woman, its king and queen, its fop, buffoon, and drudge, its youth, its chambermaid, its child, its fine lady, its hero, its walking gentleman, its villain,—in short, its possible patterns of every style of character and life. On the surface of that little mimic world play in miniature reflection all the jealousies and ambitions, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, plots and counterplots, of the huge actual world roaring without. A clear portrayal of this from the interior, or even a constant suggestion of it in connection with the history of one of its representatives, must be full of interest and edification.

It is very singular, and lamentable too, that while there are hundreds of admirable and celebrated biographies of kings, generals, statesmen, artists, inventors, merchants, authors, there is said not to exist a single life of an actor which is a recognized classic, a work combining standard value and popular charm. This is especially strange when we recollect that the genius of the player has an incomparable claim for literary preservation, because the glorious monuments of the deeds of the others remain for the contemplation of posterity, but the achievements of the actor pass away with himself in a fading tradition. Architect, sculptor, painter, poet, composer, legislator, bequeath their works as a posthumous life. The tragedian has no chance of this sort unless the features and accents of the great characters he created are photographed in breathing description on the pages that record his triumphs and make him live forever, who otherwise would soon become a bodiless and inaudible echo.

The highest value and service of histrionic genius consist herein; that the magical power of its performances evokes in the souls of those who throng to gaze on them the noblest thoughts and sentiments in a degree superior to that in which they experience them in ordinary life. They thus feel themselves exalted to a grander pitch than their native one. If the great impersonations of Forrest can in a permanent biography be pictured adequately in the colors of reality, each copy of the book will perpetuate a reflex Forrest to repeat in literature on succeeding generations what he did so effectively in life on his contemporaries; namely, strike the elemental chords of human nature till they vibrate with intense sympathy to sublimer degrees than their own of the great virtues of manly sincerity, heroism, honor, domestic love, friendship, patriotism, and liberty, which he illustrated in his chief parts.

Furthermore, every actor who excelling in his art maintains a high character and bearing, and wins a proud social position and fortune, exerts an effective influence in removing the traditional odium or suspicion from his class, and thus confers a benefit on all who are hereafter to be members of it. His example deserves to be lifted into general notice. In the case of Forrest this consideration received an unprecedented emphasis from the fact of his devoting the vast sum of money amassed in his laborious lifetime to the endowment of a home for aged and dependent members of his profession, and of a school for the public teaching of the dramatic art.

Besides, he was a man of extraordinary strength and originality of character, an imperious, self-defending personality, living steadfastly at first hand from his own impulses, perceptions, and purposes, not shiftily in faded reflections of the opinions and wishes of other people at the second or third remove. He was a standing refutation of the common prejudice against actors, that simulating so many fictitious traits they gradually cease to have genuine ones of their own, and become mere lay figures ready for every chance dress. If any man ever was true to his own fixed type, Forrest was. The study of such a character is always attractive and strengthening, a valuable tonic for more dependent and aimless natures.

He lived a varied, wide, and profound life. He travelled extensively, mingled with all sorts of people, the noble and the base, the high and the low, observed keenly, reflected much, was exposed to almost every sort of trial, and assimilated into his experience the principal secrets of human nature. The moral substance of the world passed into his soul, and the great lessons of human destiny were epitomized there. He knew the inebriating sweetness of popular applause, and the bitter revulsions consequent on its change into public disfavor and censure. He wore the honors, suffered the penalties, and proved both the solidity and the hollowness of fame on its various levels, from the wild idolatry of ignorant throngs to the admiring friendship of gifted and refined spirits. There are swarms of men of dry and contracted souls, and of a poor, wearisome monotony of conventional habits, with no spiritual saliency or relish, no free appropriation of the treasures of the world, whose lives if written would have about as much dignity and interest as the life of a dorbug or a bat. But when a man's faculties are expansive, and have embraced, in a fresh, impulsive way, a great range of experiences, the story is worth telling, and, if truly told, will not fail to yield matter for profitable meditation.

In addition, Forrest always showed himself a man of sterling integrity, inflexible truth, whose word was as good as his bond, who toiled in the open ways of self-denial and industry to build his name and position. He bribed no one to write him up, bought no one from writing him down, stooped to no startling eccentricities or tricks to get himself talked about, arranged no conspiracies to push his own claims or hold others back, but by manly resolution, study, and effort paid the fair price for all he won, triumphantly resisting those insidious lures of indolence, dissipation, and improvidence so incident to a theatrical career, and steadily raising himself to the summit of his difficult profession, where he sat in assured mastery for two generations. There was a native grandeur about him which attracted admiring attention wherever he moved.

The life of one who for so long a time and in so great a degree enjoyed the favor of his countrymen may be said to belong to the public. The man who has been watched with such eagerness in the fictitious characters of the stage kindles a desire to see him truly in his own. It is proper that the story should be told for the gratification of the natural curiosity of the people, as well as for the sake of the numerous lessons it must inculcate. The lesson of an adventurous and ascending career surmounting severe hardships and obstacles,—the lesson of a varied, fresh, full, racy, and idiosyncratic experience,—the lesson of an extraordinary knowledge of the world, transmuting into consciousness the moral substance of the sphere of humanity,—the lesson of self-respect and force of character resisting the strongest temptations to fatal indulgence,—the lesson of strong faults and errors, not resisted or concealed, but unhappily yielded to, and the bearing of their unavoidable penalties,—the lesson of resolute devotion to physical training developing a frail and feeble child into a man of herculean frame and endurance,—the lesson of talent and ambition patiently employing the means of artistic mental improvement by independent application to truth and nature,—the lesson of a brilliant fortune and position bravely won and maintained,—these and other lessons, besides all those numerous and highly important ones which the theatrical world and the dramatic art in themselves present for the instruction of mankind, have not often been more effectively taught than they may be from the life of Edwin Forrest.

The subject-matter of the drama, understood in its full dignity, is nothing less than the science of human nature and the art of commanding its manifestations. The exemplification of this in the theatre in our country, it is believed, will hereafter be endowed with a personal instructiveness and a social influence greater than it has ever had anywhere else. For the moral essence and interest of representative playing on the stage ultimately reside in the contrasts between the varieties of reality and ideality in the characters and lives of human beings. All spiritual import centres in the conflict and reconciliation of actuals and ideals. In this point of view the biography of the principal American as yet identified with the histrionic profession assumes a grave importance for Americans. Such a narrative will afford opportunity to show what are the elements of good and bad acting both in earnest and in fiction; to contrast the folly of living to gain applause with the dignity of living to achieve merit; to exhibit the valuable uses of competent criticism, the frequency and ridiculous arrogance of ignorant and prejudiced criticism; to expose the mean and malignant artifices of envy, jealousy, and ignoble rivalry. It will, in a word, give occasion for illustrating the true ideal of life, the harmonious fruition of the full richness of human nature, with instances of approaches to it and of departures from it. To get behind the scenes of the dramatic art is to get behind the scenes of the sources of power, the arts of sway, the workings of vice and virtue, the deepest secrets of the historic world.

In the distinguishing peculiarities of his structure and strain Edwin Forrest was one of those extraordinary men who seem to spring up rarely here and there, as if without ancestors, direct from some original mould of nature, and constitute a breed apart by themselves. Alexander, Cæsar, Demosthenes, Mirabeau, Chatham, Napoleon, draw their volitions from such an unsounded reservoir of power, have such latent resources of intuition, can strike such all-staggering blows, that common men, appalled before their mysteriousness, instinctively revere and obey. In the primeval time such men loomed with the overshadowing port of deities and were worshipped as avatars from a higher world. One of this class of men has, if we may use the figure, a sphere so dense and vast that the lighter and lesser spheres of those around him give way on contact with his firmer and weightier gravitation. Wherever he goes he is treated as a natural king. He carries his royal credentials in the intrinsic rank of his organism. There is in his nervous system, resulting from the free connection and uninterrupted interplay of all its parts, a centralized unity, a slowly swaying equilibrium, which fills him with the sense of a saturating drench of power. His consciousness seems to float on his surcharged ganglia in an intoxicating dreaminess of balanced force, which, by the transcendent fearlessness and endurance it imparts, lifts him out of the category of common men. The dynamic charge in his nervous centres is so deep and intense that it produces a chronic exaltation above fear into complacency, and raises him towards the eternal ether, among the topmost heads of our race. Each of these men in his turn draws from his admiring votaries the frequent sigh of regret that nature made but one such and then broke the die. This high gift, this unimpartable superiority, is a secret safely veiled from vulgar eyes. Fine spirits recognize its occult signals in the pervasive rhythm of the spinal cord, the steadiness of the eye, the enormous potency of function, the willowy massiveness of bearing, and a certain mystic languor whose sleeping surface can with swift and equal ease emit the soft gleams of love to delight or flash the forked bolts of terror to destroy. This gift, as terrible as charming, varies with the temperament and habits of its possessor. In Coleridge its profuse electricity was steeped in metaphysical poppy and mandragora. In our American Samuel Adams it was gathered in a battery that discharged the most formidable shocks of revolutionary eloquence. In Sargent S. Prentiss, one of the most imperial personalities this continent has known, it stood at a great height, but his body was too much for his brain, and, as in a thousand other melancholy examples of splendid genius ruined, the authentic divinity continually gave way to its maudlin counterfeit. Where the spell of this supernal inspiration has been inbreathed, unless it be accompanied by noble employment and gratified affection, either the mind topples into delirium and imbecility, or the temptation to drunkenness is irresistible. It can know none of the intermediate courses of mediocrity, but must still touch some extreme; and one of the five words, ambition, love, saintliness, madness, or idiocy, covers the secret history and close of genius on the earth.

In his basic build, his informing temperament, the habitual sway of his being, Forrest was a marked specimen of this dominating class of men. The circumstances of his life and the training of his mind were unfavorable to the full development of his power, in the highest directions; and it never came in him to a refined and free consciousness. Had it done so, as it did in Daniel Webster, he would have been a man entirely great. Webster was scarcely better known by his proper name than by his popular sobriquet of the godlike. He and Forrest were fashioned and equipped on the same scale, and closely resembled each other in many respects. The atlantean majesty of Webster seemed so self-commanded in its immense stability that the spectator imagined it would require a thousand men planting their levers at the distance of a mile to tip him from his poise. When he drew his hand from his bosom and stretched it forth in emphatic gesture, the movement suggested the weight of a ton. It was so with Forrest. The slowness of his action was sometimes wonderfully impressive, suggesting to the consciousness an imaginative apprehension of immense spaces and magnitudes with a corresponding dilation of passion and power. His attitudes and gestures cast angles whose lines appeared, as the imagination followed them, to reach to elemental distances. And it is the perception or the vague feeling of such things as these that magnetizes a spell-bound auditory as they gaze. The organic foundation for this exceptional power is the unification of the nervous system by the exact correlation and open communication of all its scattered batteries. This heightens the force of each point by its sympathetic reinforcement with all points. The focal equilibrium that results is the condition of an immovable self-possession. This is an attainment much more common once than it is in our day of external absorption and frittering anxieties. Its signs, the pathetic and sublime indications of this transfused unity, are visible in the immortal masterpieces of antique art, in the statues of the gods, kings, sages, heroes, and great men of India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. It is now excessively rare. Most of us are but as collections of fragments pieced together, so full of strictures and contractions that no vibratory impact or undulation can circulate freely in us. But Forrest had this open and poised unity in such a degree that when at ease he swayed on his centre like a mountain on a pivot, and when volition put rigidity into his muscles the centre was solidaire with the periphery. And he was thus differenced from his average fellow-men just as those two or three matchless thoroughbred stallions who have so startlingly raised the breed of horses in this whole country were differenced from their plebeian brothers in the dray and at the plough.

The truth here indicated is one of surpassing importance. However overlooked by the ignorant multitude, it was blindly felt by them, and it was clearly seen by all who had the key to it, especially by women of rich intuitions. With these Forrest was always an especial favorite. Not only did the magnetizing signs of his power so work upon hundreds of men all over the land that he was imitated by them, his habitudes of bearing and voice copied and transmitted, but they also wrought more deeply still on more sensitive imaginations, producing reactions there to be transmitted thence upon their offspring and perpetuate his traits in future generations. This is one of the historic prerogatives of the potent and brilliant artist, one of the chosen modes by which selective nature or providence improves the strain of our race. No biography can have a stronger claim on public attention than one which promises to throw light on the law for exalting the human organism to its highest perfection,—a secret which belongs to the complete training of a dramatic artist and the fascination with which it invests him in the eyes of sensibility.

Still further, Forrest has a claim for posthumous justice as one who was wronged in important particulars of his life and misjudged in essential elements of his character. Outraged, as he conceived, in the sanctities of his manhood, he bore the obloquy for years with outward silence, but with an inner resentment that rankled to his very soul. Endowed with a tender and expansive heart, cultivated taste, and a scrupulous sense of justice, shrinking sensitively from any stain on his honor, he was in many circles considered a selfish despot addicted to the most unprincipled practices. His enemies, combining with certain sets of critics, incompetent, prejudiced, or unprincipled, caused it to be quite commonly supposed that he was a coarse, low performer, merely capable of splitting the ears of the groundlings; while, in fact, his intellectual vigor, his conversational powers, his literary discernment, and his sensibility to the choicest delicacies of sentiment were as much superior to those of the ordinary run of men as his popular success on the stage was greater than that of the ordinary stock of actors. Betrayed—as he and his intimate friends believed—in his own home, he was, when at length, after long forbearance, moved to seek legal redress, himself accused, and as he always felt, against law, evidence, and equity, loaded with shameful condemnation and damages. Standing by his early friends with faithful devotion and open purse, he was accused of heartlessly deserting them in their misfortunes. A penniless boy, making his money not by easy speculations which bring a fortune in a day, but by hard personal labor, he gave away over a quarter of a million dollars, and then was stigmatized as an avaricious curmudgeon. Cherishing the keenest pride in his profession and in those who were its honor and ornament,—bestowing greater pecuniary benefactions on it than any other man who ever lived, and meditating a nobler moral service to it than any other mere member of it has conferred since Thespis first set up his cart,—he was accused of valuing his art only as a means of personal enrichment and glorification, and of being a haughty despiser of his theatrical brothers and sisters. As a result of these industrious misrepresentations, there is abroad in a large portion of the community a judgment of him which singularly inverts every fair estimate of his deserts after a complete survey. It seems due to justice that the facts be stated, and his character vindicated, so far as the simple light of the realities of the case will vindicate it.

Two definite illustrations may here fitly serve to show that the foregoing statements are to be regarded not as vague generalities, but as strict and literal truth. One is in relation to the frequent estimate of Forrest as a quarrelsome, fighting man. Against this may be set the simple fact that, with all his gigantic strength, pugilistic skill, and volcanic irritability, from his eighteenth year to his death he never laid violent hand in anger on a human being, except in one instance, and that was when provocation had set him beside himself. The other illustration is concerning his alleged pecuniary meanness. When he was past sixty-five, alone in the world with his fast-swelling fortune, under just the circumstances to give avarice its sharpest edge and energy, he set apart the sum of fifty thousand dollars for an annuity to an old friend, to release him from toil and make his last years happy. Even of those called generous, how many in our day are capable of such a deed in answer to a silent claim of friendship?

One more element or feature in this life, of public interest, of attraction and value for biographic use, is its strictly American character. All the outlines and setting of Forrest's career, the quality and smack of his sentiments, the mould and course of his thoughts, the style of his art, were distinctly American. His immediate descent, on both sides, from European immigrants suggests the lesson of the mixture in our nationality, the providential place and purpose of the great world-gathering of nationalities and races in our republic. His personal prejudice against foreigners, with his personal indebtedness to the teachings and examples of foreigners,—Pilmore, Wilson, Cooper, Conway, Kean,—brings up the question of the just feelings which ought to subsist between our native-born and our naturalized citizens; that true spirit of human catholicity which should blend them all in a patriotism identical at last with universal philanthropy and scorning to harbor any schismatic dislikes. And then his intimate relations, at critical periods of his life, with the most marked specimens of our Western and Southern civilization, bring upon the biographic scene many illustrations of those unique American characters, having scarcely prototypes or antitypes, which have passed away forever with the state of society that produced them.

His experience arched from 1806 to 1872, a period perhaps more momentous in its events, discoveries, inventions, and prophetic preparations than any other of the same length since history began. He saw his country expand from seventeen States to thirty-seven, and from a population of six millions to one of forty millions, with its flag floating in every wind under heaven. Washington, indeed, and Franklin, were dead when the life of Forrest began; but Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Marshall, and a throng of the Revolutionary worthies were still on the stage. When he died, every one of the second great cluster of illustrious Americans, grouped in the national memory, with Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Irving, Cooper, and Channing in the centre, was gone; and even the third brilliant company, Emerson, Hawthorne, Bryant, Bancroft, and their peers, was already broken and faltering under the blows of death and decay. During this time his heart-strings stretched out to embrace, the vascular web of his proud sympathies was woven over, every successive State and Territory added to our domain, till, in his later age, his enraptured eyes drank in the wondrous loveliness of the landscapes of California. By his constant travels and sojourns in all parts of the land, by his acquaintance with innumerable persons representing all classes and sections, by the various relationships of his profession with literature, the press, and the general public, there are suggestive associations, for more than fifty years, between his person, his spirit, his fortunes, and everything that is most peculiar and important in the historic growth and moral changes and destiny of his country.

The composition of a narrative doing justice to a life with such contents and such relations may well be thought worth the while of any one. And if it be properly composed, if the programme here laid down be adequately filled up, the result cannot fail to offer instructions worthy the attention of the American people.

For the reasons now explained, the most intimate friends of Forrest had often tried to induce him to write his own memoir. They knew that such a work would possess extreme interest and value, and they felt that he had every qualification to do it better than it could be done by anybody else. But their efforts were vain. Pride in him was greater than vanity. He had as much self-respect as he had self-complacency. He was, therefore, not ruled by those motives which caused Cicero, Augustine, Petrarch, Rousseau, Gibbon, and a throng of lesser men, to take delight in painting their own portraits, describing their own experiences, toning up the details with elaborate touches. To the reiterated arguments urged by his friends, he replied, "I have all my life been surrounded, as it were, by mirrors reflecting me to myself at every turn; subjected to those praises and censures which keep consciousness in a fever; accompanied at every step by a constant clapping of hands and stamping of feet and pointing of fingers, with the shout or the whisper, 'There goes Forrest!' I have for years been sick of this fixing of attention on myself. I can enjoy sitting down alone and recalling the scenes and occurrences of the past, regarding them as objects and events outside. But to call them up distinctly as parts of myself, and record them as a connected whole, with constant references to the standards in my own mind and the prejudices in the minds of my friends and my enemies,—I cannot do it. The pain of the reminiscences, the distress of the fixed self-contemplation, would be too much. It would drive me mad. Give over. No persuasion on earth can induce me to think of it."

Every attempt to secure an autobiography having failed, the author of the present work was led, under the circumstances before stated, and with the promise that every facility should be afforded him, to assume the task. In the first conversation held with him on the undertaking, Forrest said, "Tell the truth frankly. Let there be no whitewashing. Show me just as I have been and am." As he thus spoke, he took down from a shelf of his library the first volume of the "Memoirs of Bannister the Comedian," by John Adolphus, and read, in rich sweet tones mellowed by the echoes of his heart, the opening paragraph, which is as follows: "A friendship of many years' duration, terminated only by his death, impels me to lay before the public a memoir of the life of the late John Bannister. In executing this task I am exempted from the difficulties that so frequently beset the author of a friendly biographical essay: I have no vices to conceal, no faults to palliate, no contradictions to reconcile, no ambiguities of conduct to explain. I purpose to narrate the life of a man whose characteristic integrity and buoyant benevolence were always apparent in his simulated characters, and who in real life proved that those exhibitions were not assumed for the mere purposes of his profession, but that his great success in his difficult career arose in no small degree from that truth and sincerity which diffused their influence over the personages he represented." As the admiring cadence of his voice died sadly away, he laid down the volume and said to his auditor, "For your sake, in the work on which you have entered, I wish it were with me as it was with Bannister. But it is otherwise. My faults are many, and I deserve much blame. Yet, after every confession and every regret, I feel before God that I have been a man more sinned against than sinning; and, if the whole truth be told, I am perfectly willing to bear all the censure, all the condemnation, that justly belongs to me. Therefore use no disguising varnish, but let the facts stand forth."

Such were the words of Forrest himself; and in their spirit the author will proceed, sparing no pains to learn the truth, neither holding back or trimming down foibles and vices nor magnifying virtues, recording his own honest convictions without fear or favor, hoping to produce as the result a book which shall do justice to its subject, and contain enough substantial worth and interest to repay the attention its readers may bestow on it. The work will be written more from the stage point of view than from the pulpit point of view, but most of all from that popularized academic or philosophic point of view which surveys the whole field of human life in a spirit at once of scientific appreciation, poetic sympathy, and impartial criticism.

It is to be understood that the acts or traits herein described which reflect particular credit on Edwin Forrest have not been paraded or proclaimed by himself, but have either been drawn from him by questioning or been discovered through inquiries set on foot and documents brought to light by friends who loved and honored him, knew how grossly he had been belied, and were determined that his true record should be set before the public. The writer hopes his readers will not here take a prejudice, imagining that they spy that frequent weakness of biographers, a tendency to undue laudation. All that he asks is that a candid examination be given to the evidence he adduces, and then that a corresponding decision be rendered. While he tries to do justice to the good side of his subject, he will be equally frank in exposing the ill side and pointing its morals.

The sources of information and authority made use of are as follows: First, conversations and correspondence, for five years, with Forrest himself; second, conversations and correspondence with his chief friends and intimates; third, half a dozen biographical sketches of considerable length, several of them in print, the others in manuscript; fourth, magazine articles and newspaper notices and criticisms, extending through his entire career, and reaching to the number of some twenty thousand; fifth, the mass of letters and papers left by him at his death, and made available for my purpose by the kindness of his executors. I must also make grateful acknowledgment, in particular, of valuable suggestions and aid from Gabriel Harrison and T. H. Morrell, two enthusiastic admirers of the player, whose loving zeal for him did not end with his exit.

CHAPTER II.

PARENTAGE AND FAMILY.

Edwin Forrest made his first appearance on the stage of this world the ninth day of March, 1806, in the city of Philadelphia. His father, William Forrest, was a Scotchman, who had migrated to America and established himself in business as an importer of Scottish fabrics. He was of good descent. His father, the grandparent of the subject of this biography, is described as a large, powerfully-built man, residing, in a highly respectable condition, at Cooniston, Mid-Lothian, Edinburgh County, Scotland. In the margin is a copy of the family coat of arms. It was discovered and presented to Mr. Forrest by his friend William D. Gallagher. The motto, "Their life and their green strength are coeval," or, as it may be turned, "They live no longer than they bear verdure," happily characterizes a race whose hardy constitutions show their force in vigorous deeds to the very end. He who, in America, plumes himself on mere titular nobility of descent, may be a snob; but the science of genealogy, the tracing of historic lineages and transmitted family characteristics, deals with one of the keenest interests of the human heart, one of the profoundest elements in the destiny of man. And the increasing attention given to the subject in our country is a good sign, and not the trifling vanity which some superficial critics deem it. It deals with those complicated facts of crossing or mingling streams of blood and lines of nerve out of which—and it is a point of immeasurable importance—the law of hereditary communication of qualities and quantities, influences and destinies, is to be formulated.

William Forrest, after a long struggle against pecuniary embarrassments, gave up his mercantile business, and obtained a situation in the old United States Bank. On the closing of that institution, in connection with which his merits had secured him the friendly acquaintance of the celebrated millionaire Stephen Girard, he received a similar appointment in the Girard Bank. This office he held until his death, oppressed with the debts bequeathed by his failure, supporting his family with difficulty, and leaving them quite destitute at last.

Mr. Forrest was much esteemed for his good sense, his dignified sobriety of demeanor, his strict probity, his modesty and industry. Reserved and taciturn in manners, tall, straight, and slender in person, he was a hard-working, care-worn, devout, and honest man, who strove to be just and true in every relation. He had a pale and sombre face, with regular features, which lighted up with strong expressiveness when he was pleased or earnestly interested. He was somewhat disposed to melancholy, though not at all morose, his depression and reserve being attributable rather to weariness under his enforced struggle with unfavorable conditions than to any native gloom of temper or social antipathy.

Edwin, in his own later years, dwelt with veneration on the memory of his father, and was fond of recalling his early recollections of him, deeply regretting that there was no portrait or daguerreotype of him in existence. He was wont to say that among the sweetest memories that remained to him from his childhood were the rich and musical though plaintive tones of his father's voice, the ringing and honest heartiness of his occasional laugh, and the singular charm of his smile. He said, "I used to think, when my father smiled, the light bursting over his dark and sad countenance,—its very rarity lending it a double lustre,—I used to think I never saw anything so beautiful." The light of love and joy broke over his sombre features like sunshine suddenly gilding a gray crag.

The unobtrusive, toilsome life of this worthy man, unmarked by any salient points possessing general interest for the public, glided on in even course to the close, darkened by the shadows of material adversity, but brightened by the serene lights of domestic happiness and self-respect. In his poverty he knew many mortifications, many hardships of self-denial and anxious forethought. But in his upright character and blameless conduct, in his retiring and religious disposition, in the kind and respectful regard of all who knew him, he experienced the supports and consolations deserved by such a type of man,—a type common in the middle walks of American society, and as full of merit as it is free from all that is noisy or meretricious. He was not an educated man, not disciplined and adorned by the arts of literary and social culture. But his virtues made him eminently respectable in himself and in his sphere. He came of a good stock, with noble traditions in its veins, endowed with sound judgment, refined nervous fibre, a grave moral tone, and persevering self-reliance. He died of consumption, in 1819, in the sixty-second year of his age. In the death of his youngest son his blood was extinguished, and the fire went out on his family hearth. No member of his lineage remains on earth. The recollections of him, now dim threads in the minds of a few survivors, will soon fall into the unremembering maw of the past. Herein his life and fate have this interest for all, that they so closely resemble those of the great majority of our race. Few can escape this common lot of obscurity and oblivion. Nor should one care much to escape it. It is not possible for all to be conspicuous, famous, envied. Neither is it desirable. The genuine end for all is to be true and good, obedient to their duty, and useful and pleasant to their kind. If they can also be happy, why then, that is another blessing for which to thank God. Beyond a question the most illustrious favorites of fortune, amidst all the glitter and hurrah of their lot, are often less contented in themselves and less loved by their associates than those members of the average condition who attract so little attention while they stay and are forgotten so soon when they have gone. And, mortal limits once passed, what matters all this to the immortal soul? The rank of a man in the sight of God and his fate in eternity—which are the essential things alike for the loftiest and the lowliest—depend on considerations very different from the tinsel of his station or the noise of his career. One may be poor, weak, obscure, unfortunate, yet be a truly good and happy man. That is the essential victory. Another may be rich, powerful, renowned, enveloped in the luxuries of the earth. If his soul is adjusted to its conditions and wisely uses them, this is a boon still more to be desired; for he too has the essential victory. The real end and aim of life always lie within the soul, not in any exterior prize: still, the best outward conditions may well be the most coveted, although there is no lot which does not yield full compensations, if the occupant of that lot is what he ought to be.

The foregoing sketch, brief and meagre as it is, presents all for which the constructive materials exist.

In turning from the father to the mother of Edwin Forrest, the data are as simple and modest as before, and a still more genial office awaits the biographer. For she was an excellent example of a good woman, gentle, firm, judicious, diligent, cheerful, religious, ever faithful to her duties, the model of what a wife and a mother ought to be. Her son growingly revered and loved her to the very end of his life, as much as a man could do this side of idolatry; and he was anxious that her portrait should be presented and her worth signalized in this book. Ample opportunities will be afforded for doing this.

Rebecca Forrest was, in every sense of the words, a true mate and helpmeet to her husband. He reposed on her with unwavering affection, respect, and confidence, and found unbroken comfort and satisfaction there, whatever might happen elsewhere. Through twenty-five years of happy wedlock she shared all his labors and trials, joys and sorrows, and survived him for a yet longer period, fondly venerating his memory, scrupulously guarding and training his children. Her maiden name was Lauman. Born in Philadelphia, she was of German descent on both sides, her parents having migrated thither in early life, and set up a new hearth-stone, to continue here, in a modified form, the old Teutonic homestead left with tears beyond the sea.

William Forrest and Rebecca Lauman were married in 1795, he being at that time thirty-seven years old, she thirty-two. Seven children were born to them in succession at quite regular intervals of two years. The nameless boy who preceded Edwin in 1804 died at birth. The remaining six were all baptized in the Episcopal Church of Saint Paul, on Third Street, in Philadelphia, by the Rev. Doctor Pilmore, on the same day, November 13, 1813. The names of these six children, in the order of their birth, were Lorman, Henrietta, William, Caroline, Edwin, and Eleanora.

The first of these to die was Lorman, the eldest of the family. He was a tanner and currier by trade. He was over six feet in height, straight as an arrow, lithe and strong, and of a brave and adventurous disposition. He left home on a filibustering enterprise directed to some part of South America, in his twenty-sixth year, and nothing was heard of him afterwards. The following letter, written by Edwin to his brother William, who was then at Shepherdstown, in Virginia, announces the unfortunate design of poor Lorman:

"Philadelphia, August 1st, 1822.

"Dear Brother,—I received your favor of 29th July, and noted its contents. I am sorry to hear you have such ill luck. Your business in this city is very good.

"Lorman has returned from New York, and intends on Monday next to embark on board a patriot privateer, now lying in this port, for Saint Thomas, and from thence to South America, where, in the patriot service, he has been commissioned 1st lieutenant, at a salary of eighty dollars per month. He screens himself from mother by telling her he is going to Saint Thomas to follow his trade, being loath to inform her of the true cause. A numerous acquaintance accompany him on the said expedition. He wishes me to beg of you not to say anything when you return more than he has allowed himself to say. It is a glorious expedition, and had I not fair prospects in the theatric line I should be induced to go.

"Come on as early as possible. You may stand a chance of getting a berth in the Walnut Street Theatre, or, which is most certain and best, work at your trade.

"Mrs. Riddle has removed her dwelling to a romantic scene in Hamilton Villa. John Moore, advancing above mediocrity, performed Alexander the Great for her benefit. Please write as early as possible. Till then adieu. In haste, your affectionate brother,

"Edwin."

The expedition proved an ill-starred one, and Lorman perished in it in some unrecorded encounter, passing out of history like an unknown breath. It seems fated that the paths to all great goals shall be strewn with the wrecks of untimely and irregular enterprises, unfortunate but prophetic precursors of the final triumphs. It has been so in the case of the many premature and wrongful attempts to grasp for the flag of the United States those backward and waiting territories destined, perhaps, as the harmonies of Providence weave themselves out, spontaneously to shoot into the web of the completed unity of the Western Continent.

Many a gallant and romantic fellow, many a reckless brawler, many a coarse and vulgar aspirant, many a crudely dreaming and scheming patriot, half inspired, half mad, has fallen a victim to those numerous semi-piratical attempts at conquest which have in the eyes of some flung on our flag the lustre of their promise, in the eyes of others, planted there the stains of their folly and crime. But if there be a systematic plan or divine drift and purport in history, every one of these efforts has had its place, has contributed its quota of influence, has left its seed, yet to spring up and break into flower and fruit. Then every life, buried and forgotten while the slow preparations accumulate, will have a resurrection in the ripe fulfilment of the end for which it was spent. Meanwhile, the brief and humble memory of Lorman Forrest sleeps with the nameless multitude of pioneers the forerunning line of whose graves invites the progress of free America all around the hemisphere.

William, the second son, expired under a sudden attack of bilious colic, at the age of thirty-four. He was a printer, and worked at this trade for several years, buffeted by fortune from place to place. The mechanical drudgery, however, irked him. The lack of opportunity and ability to rise and to better his condition also disheartened and repelled him; and before he was twenty-one he abandoned the business of type-setting for an employment more suited to his tastes. He adopted the theatrical profession and entered on the stage, of which he had been an amateur votary from his early youth. Their common dramatic aptitudes and aspirations were a strong bond of fellowship between him and his youngest brother, and they had a thousand times practised together at the art of acting, in private, before either made his appearance in public. This coincidence of talent and ambition between the brothers seems to reveal an inherited tendency. The local reputation of the elder, once clear and bright, has been almost utterly lost in the wide and brilliant fame of the younger. It is fitting that it be here snatched from oblivion, at least for a passing moment. For he was both a good man and a good actor, performing his part well alike on the scenic stage and on the real one; though in his case, as in that of most of his contemporaries, the merit was not of such pronounced and impressive relief as to survive in any legible character the obliterating waves of the half-century which has swept across it. Yet his accomplishments, force, and desert were sufficient to make him, in spite of early poverty and premature death, for several years the respected and successful manager of the leading theatre, first of Albany, afterwards of Philadelphia.

The following tribute was paid to him in one of the papers of his native city on the day of his burial:

"When we are awakened from the dreams of mimic life, so vividly portrayed by histrionic skill, to the fatal realities of life itself, the blow falls with double severity. Such was the effect on Monday evening, when, on the falling of the curtain at the Arch Street Theatre, after the first piece, Mr. Thayer stepped forward, announced the sudden death of Mr. William Forrest, the Manager, and requested the indulgent sympathy of the audience for the postponement of the remaining entertainments. A shock so sudden and so profound it has seldom been our lot to record. Engaged in his duties all the morning, it appeared but a moment since he had been among us, in the full enjoyment of health, when the hand of the unsparing destroyer struck him down. Mr. Forrest was a great and general favorite among his associates, to whom he was endeared by every feeling of kindness and affection. Few possessed a more placid or even disposition, and few won friends so fast and firmly. In his private relations he was equally estimable, and the loss of him as a son and as a brother will be long and severely felt."

He was also spoken of in the same strain by the journals of Albany, one of them using these words: "Our citizens will regret to read of the death of Mr. William Forrest. He was known here not only as a manager of much taste and enterprise, but as an actor of conceded merit and reputation. He was also esteemed here, as in Philadelphia, by numerous acquaintances for his personal worth and social qualities. The tidings of his decease will be received with sorrow by all who knew him."

So, on the modest actor, manager, and man, after the short and well-meant scene of his quiet, checkered, not unsuccessful life, the curtain fell in swift and tragic close, leaving the mourners, who would often speak kindly of him, to go about the streets for a little while and then fade out like his memory.

The three daughters of the family—none of them ever marrying—lived to see their youngest brother at the height of his fame, and always shared freely in the comforts secured by his prosperity. They were proud of his talents and reputation, grateful for his loving generosity, devoted to his welfare. In his absence from home their correspondence was constantly maintained, and the only interruption their attachment knew was death. Henrietta lived to be sixty-five years old, dying of liver-complaint in 1863. The next, Caroline, died from an attack of apoplexy in 1869, at the age of sixty-seven. And the youngest, Eleanora, after suffering partial paralysis, died of cancer in 1871, being sixty-three years old.

No one among all our distinguished countrymen has been more thoroughly American than Edwin Forrest. From the beginning to the end of his career he was intensely American in his sympathies, his prejudices, his training, his enthusiasm for the flag and name of his country, his proud admiration for the democratic genius of its institutions, his faith in its political mission, his interest in its historic men, his fervent love of its national scenery and its national literature. He was also American in his exaggerated dislike and contempt for the aristocratic classes and monarchical usages of the Old World. He did not seem to see that there are good and evil in every existing system, and that the final perfection will be reached only by a process of mutual giving and taking, which must go on until the malign elements of each are expelled, the benign elements of the whole combined.

In view of the concentrated Americanism of Forrest, it may seem singular that he was himself a child of foreign parentage, his father being Scotch, his mother German. But this fact, which at first appears strange, is really typical. Nothing could be more characteristic of our nationality, which is a composite of European nationalities transferred to these shores, and here mixed, modified, and developed under new conditions. The only original Americans are the barbaric tribes of Indians, fast perishing away, and never suggested to the thought of the civilized world by the word. The great settlements from which the American people have sprung were English, French, Dutch, and Spanish. To these four ethnic rivers were added a dark flood of slaves from Africa, and vast streams of emigration from Ireland and Germany, impregnated with lesser currents from Italy, Sweden, Portugal, Russia, and other countries, adding now portentous signal-waves from China and Japan.

The history of European emigration to America is, in one aspect, a tragedy; in another aspect, a romance. When we think of the hardships suffered, the ties sundered, the farewells spoken, the aching memories left behind, it is a colossal tragedy. When we think of the attractive conditions inviting ahead, the busy plans, the joyous hopes, the prophetic schemes and dreams of freedom, plenty, education, reunion with following friends and relatives, that have gilded the landscape awaiting them beyond the billows, it is a chronic romance. The collective experience in the exodus of the millions on millions of men, women, and children, who, under the goad of trials at home and the lure of blessings abroad, have forsaken Europe for America,—the laceration of affections torn from their familiar objects, the tears and wails of the separation, the dismal discomforts of the voyage, the perishing of thousands on the way, either drawn down the sepulchral mid-ocean or dashed on the rocks in sight of their haven, the long-drawn heart-break of exile, the tedious task of beginning life anew in a strange land,—and then the auspicious opening of the change, the rapid winning of an independence, the quick development of a home-feeling, the assuagement of old sorrows, the conquest of fresh joys and a fast-brightening prosperity broad enough to welcome all the sharers still pouring in endless streams across the sea,—the perception of all this makes the narrative of American immigration at once one of the most pathetic and one of the most inspiring episodes in the history of humanity. This tale—as a complete account of the emigrant ships, the emigrant trains, the emigrant wagons, the clearings and villages and cities of the receding West, would reveal it—stand unique and solitary in the crowd of its peculiarities among all the records of popular removals and colonial settlements since the dispersion of the Aryan race, mysterious mother of the Indo-European nations, from its primeval seat in the bosom of Asia. All this suffering, all this hope, all this seething toil, has had its mission, still has its purpose, and will have its reward when the predestined effects of it are fully wrought out. Its providential object is to expedite the work of reconciling the divided races, nations, parties, classes, and sects of mankind. The down-trodden poor had groaned for ages under the oppressions of their lot, victims of political tyranny, religious bigotry, social ostracism, and their own ignorance. The traditions and usages of power and caste which surrounded them were so old, so intense, so unqualified, that they seemed hopelessly doomed to remain forever as they were. Then the Western World was discovered. The American Republic threw its boundless unappropriated territory and its impartial chance in the struggle of life open to all comers, with the great prizes of popular education, liberty of thought and speech, and universal equality before the law. The multitudes who flocked in were rescued from a social state where the hostile favoritisms organized and rooted in a remote past pressed on them with the fatality of an atmosphere, and were transferred to a state which offered them every condition and inducement to emancipate themselves from clannish prejudices, superstitions, and disabilities, to flow freely together in the unlimited sympathies of manhood, and form a type of character and civilization as cosmopolitan as their two bases,—charity and science. The significance, therefore, of the colonizing movement from the Old World to the New is the breaking up of the fatal power of transmitted routine, exclusive prerogative and caste, and the securing for the people of a condition inviting them to blend and co-operate on pure grounds of universal humanity. In spite of fears and threats, over all drawbacks, the experiment is triumphantly going on. The prophets who foresee the end already behold all the tears it has cost glittering with rainbows.

America being thus wholly peopled with immigrants and the descendants of immigrants, our very nationality consisting in a fresh and free composite made of the tributes from the worn and routinary nations of the other hemisphere, the distinctive glory and design of this last historic experiment of civilization residing in the fact that it presents an unprecedented opportunity for the representatives of all races, climes, classes, and creeds to get rid of their narrow and irritating peculiarities, to throw off the enslaving heritage imposed on them by the hostile traditions and unjust customs of their past, no impartial observer can fail to see the unreasonableness of that bitter prejudice against foreigners which has been so common among those of American birth. This prejudice has had periodical outbreaks in our politics under the name of Native Americanism. In its unreflective sweep it is not only irrational and cruel, but also a gross violation of the true principles of our government, which deal with nothing less than the common interests and truths of universal humanity. And yet, in its real cause and meaning, properly discriminated, it is perfectly natural in its origin, and of the utmost importance in its purport. It is not against foreigners, their unlimited welcome here, their free sharing in the privilege of the ballot and the power of office, that the cry should be raised. That would be to exemplify the very bigotry in ourselves against which we protest in others. It is only against the importation to our shores, and the obstinate and aggravating perpetuation here, of the local vices, the bad blood, the clannish hates, the separate and inflaming antagonisms of all sorts, which have been the chief sources of the sufferings of these people in the lands from which they came to us. In its partisan sense the motto, America for those of American birth, is absurdly indefensible. But the indoctrination of every American citizen, no matter where born or of what parentage, with the spirit of universal humanity is our supreme duty. Freedom from proscription and prejudice, a fair course and equal favor for all, an open field for thought, truth, progress,—this expresses the true spirit of the Republic. It is only against what is opposed to this that we should level our example, our argument, and our persuasion. The invitation our flag advertises to all the world is, Come, share in the bounties of God, nature, and society on the basis of universal justice and good will, untrammelled by partial laws, unvexed by caste monopolies. Welcome to all; but, as they touch the strand, let them cast off and forget the distinguishing badges which would cause one portion to fear or hate, despise or tyrannize over, another portion. Not they who happened to be born here, but they who have the spirit of America, are true Americans.

The father and mother of Edwin Forrest were thoroughly Americanized, and taught him none of the special peculiarities of his Scottish or German ancestry. So far as his conscious training was concerned, in language, religion, social habits, he grew up the same as if his parentage had for repeated generations been American. This was so emphatically the case that all his life long he felt something of the Native American antipathy for foreigners, and cherished an exaggerated sympathy for many of the most pronounced American characteristics. Yet there never was any bigotry in his theoretical politics. His creed was always purely democratic; and so was the core of his soul. He was only superficially infected by the illogical prejudices around him. Whatever deviations he may have shown in occasional word or act, his own example, in his descent and in his character, yielded a striking illustration of the genuine relation which should exist between all the members of our nationality, from whatever land they may hail and whatever shibboleths may have been familiar to their lips. Namely, they should, as soon as possible, forget the quarrels of the past, and hold everything else subordinate to the supreme right of private liberty and the supreme duty of public loyalty, recognizing the true qualifications for American citizenship only in the virtues of American manhood, the American type of manhood being simply the common type liberalized and furthered by the free light and stimulus of republican institutions. Overlook it or violate it whoever may, such is the lesson of the facts before us. And it is a point of the extremest interest that, however much Forrest may sometimes have failed in his personal temper and prejudices to practise this lesson, the constantly emphasized and reiterated exemplification of it in his professional life constitutes his crowning glory and originality as an actor. He was distinctively the first and greatest democrat, as such, that ever trod the stage. The one signal attribute of his playing was the lifted assertion of the American idea, the superiority of man to his accidents. He placed on the forefront of every one of his celebrated characters in blazing relief the defiant freedom and sovereignty of the individual man.

Thus an understanding of the ground traversed in the present chapter is necessary for the appreciation of his position and rank in the history of the theatre. Boldly rejecting the mechanical traditions of the stage, shaking off the artificial trammels of the established schools of his profession, he looked directly into his own mind and heart and directly forth upon nature, and, summoning up the passionate energies of his soul, struck out a style of acting which was powerful in its personal sincerity and truth, original in its main features, and, above all, democratic and American in its originality.

But though the parents of Edwin did not try to neutralize the influence of purely American circumstances of neighborhood and schooling for their child, they could not help transmitting the organic individual heritage of their respective nationalities in his very generation and development. The generic features and qualities of every one are stamped in his constitution from the historic soil and social climate and organized life of the country of the parents through whom he derives his being from the aboriginal Source of Being. Certain peculiar modes of acting and reacting on nature and things—modes derived from peculiarities of ancestral experience, natural scenery, social institutions, and other conditions of existence—constitute those different styles of humanity called races or nations. These peculiarities of constitution, temper, taste, conduct, looks, characterize in varying degrees all the individuals belonging to a country, making them Englishmen, Spaniards, Russians, Turks, or Chinese. These characteristics, drawn from what a whole people have in common, are transmitted by parents to their progeny and inwrought in their organic being by a law as unchangeable as destiny,—nay, by a law which is destiny. The law may, in some cases, baffle our scrutiny by the complexity of the elements in the problem, or it may be qualified by fresh conditions, but it is always there, working in every point of plasma, every fibril of nerve, every vibration of force. The law of heredity is obscured or masked in several ways. First, the peculiarities of the two lines of transmitted ancestry, from father and from mother, may in their union neutralize each other, or supplement each other, or exaggerate each other, or combine to form new traits. Secondly, they may be modified by the reaction of the original personality of the new being, and also by the reaction of the new conditions in which he is placed. Still, the law is there, and works. It is at once the fixed fatality of nature and the free voice of God.

Edwin Forrest was fortunate in the national bequests of brain and blood or structural fitnesses and tendencies which he received from his fatherland and from his motherland. The distinctive national traits of the Scottish and of the German character, regarded on the favorable side, were signally exemplified in him. The traits of the former are courage, acuteness, thrift, tenacity, clannishness, and patriotism; of the latter, reasoning intelligence, poetic sentiment, honesty, personal freedom, capacity for systematic drill, and open sense of humanity. These two lines of prudential virtue and expansive sympathy were marked in his career. The attributes of weakness or vice that belonged to him were rather human than national. So the Caledonian and Teutonic currents that met in his American veins were an inheritance of goodness and strength.

Nor was he less fortunate in the bequeathal of strictly personal qualities from his individual parents. Those conditions of bodily and mental life, the offshoot of the conjoined being of father and mother, imprinted and inwoven and ever operative in all the globules of his blood and all the sources of his volition, were far above the average both in the physical power and in the moral rank they gave. His father was a tall, straight, sinewy man, who lived to his sixty-second year a life of hardship and care, without the aid of any particular knowledge of the laws of health. His mother was of an uncommonly strong, well-balanced, and healthy constitution, who bore seven children, worked hard, saw much trouble, but lived in equanimity to her seventy-fifth year. From the paternal side no special tendency to any disease is traceable; on the maternal side, only, through the grandfather, who was an inveterate imbiber of claret, that germ of the gout which ripened to such terrible mischief for him. In intellectual, moral, and religious endowments and habits, both parents were of a superior order, remarked by all who knew them for sound sense, sterling virtue, unwearied industry, devout spirit and carriage. The good, strong, consecrated stock, both national and personal, they gave their boy, alike by generative transmission, by example, and by precept, was of inexpressible service to him. He never forgot it or lost it. It stood him in good stead in a thousand trying hours. Amidst the constant and intense temptations of his exposed professional life, it gave him superb victories over the worst of those vices to which hundreds of his fellows succumbed in disgraceful discomfiture and untimely death. It is true he yielded to follies and sins,—as, under such exposures, who would not?—but his sense of honor and his memory of his mother kept him from doing anything which would destroy his self-respect and give him a bad conscience. This inestimable boon he owed to the moral fibre of his birth and early training.

The thoughtful reader will not deem that the writer is making too much of these preliminary matters. Besides their intrinsic interest and value, they are vitally necessary for the full understanding of much that is to follow. In the formation of the character and the shaping of the career of any man the circumstance of supremest power is the ancestral spirits which report themselves in him from the past, and the organific influences of blood and nerve brought to bear on him in the mystic world of the womb previous to his entrance into this breathing theatre of humanity. The ignorance and the squeamishness prevalent in regard to the subject of the best raising of children are the causes of indescribable evils ramifying in all directions. It has been tabooed from the province of public study and teaching, although no other matter presents such pressing and sacred claims on universal attention. It cannot always continue to be so neglected or forced into the dark. The young giant, Social Science, so rapidly growing, will soon insist on the thorough investigation of it, and on the accordant organization in practice of the truths which shall be elicited. When by analysis, generalization, experiment, and all sorts of methods and tests, men shall have ransacked every other subject, it may be hoped, they will begin to apply a little study to the one subject of really paramount importance,—the breeding of their own species. When the same scientific care and skill, based on accumulated and sifted knowledge, shall be devoted to this province as has already been exemplified with such surprising results in the improvement of the breeds of sheep, cows, horses, hens, and pigeons, still more amazing achievements may be confidently expected. The ranks of hopeless cripples, invalids, imbeciles, idlers, and criminals will cease to be recruited. The rate of births may perhaps be reduced to one-fourth of what it now is, with a commensurate elevation of the condition of society by the weeding out of the perishing and dangerous classes. And the rate of infant mortality may be reduced to one per cent. of its present murderous average. The regeneration of the world will be secured by the perfecting of its generation.

These ideas were familiar to Forrest. He often spoke of them, and wondered they were so slow to win the notice they deserved. For the hypocrisy or prudery which affected to regard them as indelicate and to be shunned in polite speech, he expressed contempt. In his soul the chord of ancestral lineage which bound his being with a vital line running through all foregone generations of men up to the Author of men, was, as he felt it, exceptionally intense and sacred. And surely the whole subject of our consanguinity in time and space is, to every right thinker, as full of poetic attraction and religious awe on one side as it is of scientific interest and social importance on the other.

Each of us has two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents. In every receding generation the number doubles, from thirty-two to sixty-four, then to one hundred and twenty-eight, and so on; so that at the twentieth remove, omitting the factor of intermarriages, one has over a million ancestors! So many threads of nerve thrilling into him out of the dark past! So many invisible rivulets of blood tributary to the ocean of his heart, the collective experiences of all of them latently reported in his structure! His physiological mould and type, his mental biases and passional drifts, his longevity, and other prospective experiences and fate, are the resultant of these combined contributions modified by his own choice and new circumstances. What can be conceived more solemnly impressive, or to us morally more sublime and momentous, than this picture of an immortal personality, isolated in his own responsible thought amidst the universe, but surrounded by the mysterious ranks of his ancestry, all connected with him by spiritual ligaments which lengthen and multiply, but never break, as he tracks them, further and further, through the annals of time, through prehistoric ages, incapable of solution or pause till his faith apprehends the beginning of their tremulous lines in the creative fiat of God!

Indulge in whatever theories we may, whether of continuous development or of sudden creation, it is through our parents that we receive our being. It is through our ancestry, spreading ultimately back to the limits of the human race, that each of us descends from God. By them it is that the Creator creates us. Well may the great Asiatic races, the soft and contemplative Brahmins, the child-like Chinese, the pure and thoughtful Parsees, worship their unknown Maker in forms of reverential remembrance and adoration paid to their known ancestors, gathering their relics in dedicated tombs or temples, cherishing their names and examples and precepts with fond devotion, celebrating pensive and glad festivals in their honor, preparing, around their pious offerings of fruits and flowers, little seats of grass, in a circle, for the pleased guardian spirits of their recalled fathers and mothers invisibly to occupy. Let not the reckless spirit of Young America, absorbed in the chase of material gain, and irreverent of everything but sensuous good, call it all a superstition and a folly. There is truth in it, too, and a hallowing touch of the universal natural religion of humanity.

America, in her hasty and incompetent contempt for the dotage, fails to appropriate the wisdom of the Orient. More of their humility, leisure, meditation, reverence, aspiration, mystic depth of intuition, will do us as much good as more of our science, ingenuity, independence, and enterprise will do them. The American people, in their deliverance from the entrammelling conditions of the over-governed Old World, and their exciting naturalization on the virgin continent of the West, have, to some extent, erred in affixing their scorn and their respect to the wrong objects. In repudiating excessive or blind loyalty to titular superiors and false authority, they have lost too much of the proper loyalty to real superiors and just authority. They are too much inclined to be contented with respectability and the average standard, instead of aspiring to perfection by the divine standard. They show too much deference to public opinion, and are too eagerly drawn after the vulgar prizes of public pursuit,—money and social position,—to the comparative neglect of personal reflection and culture, personal honor, and detachment in a self-sustaining insight of principles. They think too subserviently of what is established, powerful, fashionable,—the very vice from which the founders of the country fled hither. They think too meanly and haltingly of the truth and good which are not yet established and fashionable, but ought to be so,—thus turning their backs on the very virtue which heaven and earth command them in especial to cultivate, namely, the virtue of an unflinching spirit of progress in obedience to whatever is right and desirable as against whatever wrongfully continues to govern. The best critics from abroad, and the wisest observers at home, agree that the most distinctive vice in the American character is described by the terms complacent rashness and assumption, crude impertinence, disrespect to age, irreverence towards parents, contempt for whatever does not belong to itself. This rampant democratic royalty in everybody has proved sadly detrimental to that spirit of modesty and docility which, however set against oppression and falsehood, is profoundly appreciative of everything sacred or useful and sits with veneration at the feet of the past to garner up its treasures with gratitude. The American who improves instead of abusing his national privileges will maintain his private convictions and not bend his knee slavishly to public opinion, but he will treat the feelings of others with tenderness, bow to all just authority, and reverently uncover his heart before everything that he sees to be really sacred.

On these points, it will be seen in the subsequent pages, the subject of the present biography, as a boldly-pronounced American citizen, was in most respects a good example. If occasionally, in some things, he practised the American vice,—self-will, unconscious bigotry intrenched in a shedding conceit,—he prevailingly exemplified the American virtue,—tolerance, frankness, generosity, a sympathetic forbearance in the presence of what was venerable and dear to others, although it was not so to him. While withholding his homage from merely conventional sanctities, he never scoffed at them; and he always instinctively worshipped those intrinsic sanctities which carry their divine credentials in their own nature. The filial and fraternal spirit in particular was very strong in him, and bore rich fruits in his life and conduct.

The conspicuous relative decay of the filial and fraternal virtues, or weakening of the family tie, among the American people, the precocious development and self-assertion of their children, wear an evil aspect, and certainly are not charming. Yet they may be inevitable phases in the evolution of the final state of society. They may distinguish a transitional stage through which all countries will have to pass, America being merely in the front. In ancient life the political and social unit was the family. The whole family was held strictly responsible for the deeds of each member of it. The drift marked by democracy is to make the individual the ultimate unit in place of the family, legally clearing each person from his consanguineous entanglements, and holding him responsible solely for his own deeds in relation to entire society. The movement towards individuality is disintegrating; but, when completed, it may, by a terminal conversion of opposites, play into a more intimate fellowship and harmony of the whole than has ever yet been realized on earth. Thus it is not impossible that the narrower and intenser domestic bonds may be giving way simply before the extruding growth of wider and grander bonds, the particular yielding merely as the universal advances. If the destiny of the future be some form of social unity, some public solidarity of sympathies and interests in which all shall mutually identify themselves with one another, then the temporary irreverences and insurgences of a democratic régime may have their providential purpose and their abundant compensation in that final harmony of co-operative freedom and obedience to which they are preparing the way out of priestly and monarchical régimes.

Either this is the truth, that the youthful insubordination and premature complacency, the rarity of generous friendships and the commonness of sinister rivalries, which mark our time and land are necessary accompaniments of the passage from individual loyalties to collective loyalties, from an antagonistic to a communistic civilization, or else our republicanism is but the repetition of a stale experiment, doomed to renewed failure. There are political horoscopists who predict the subversion of the American Republic and its replacement by a monarchy. Thickening corruption and strife between two hostile parties over a vast intermediate stratum of indifference prompt the observer to such a conclusion. But a more auspicious faith is that these ills are to be overruled for good. It is more likely that both republicanism and monarchy, in their purest forms, are to vanish in behalf of a third, as yet scarcely known, form of government, which will give the final solution to the long-vexed problem, namely, government by scientific commissions which will know no prejudice, but represent all in the spirit of justice.

The exact knowledge, co-operative power, and disciplined skill chiefly exemplified hitherto in war, or in great business enterprises conducted in the exclusive interests of their supporters against all others,—this combination, universalized and put on a basis of disinterestedness, seeking the good of an entire nation or the entire world, will furnish the true form of government now wanted. For no government of the many by the few in the spirit of will, whether that will represents the minority or the majority, can be permanent. The only everlasting or truly divine government must be one free from all will except the will of God, one which shall guide in the spirit of science by demonstrated laws of truth and right, representing the harmonized good of the whole.

In view of such a possible result, the trustful American, comparing his people with Asiatics or with Europeans, can regard without fear the apparent change of certain forms of virtue into correlative forms of vice; because he holds that this is but a transient disentwining of the moral and religious tendrils from around smaller and more selfish objects in preparation for their permanent re-entwining around greater and more disinterested ones, when private families shall dissolve into a universal family, or their separate interests be conformed to its collective interests. All humanity is the family of God, and perhaps the historic selfishness of the lesser families may crumble into individualities in order to re-combine in the universal welfare of this.

Meanwhile, it may well be maintained that the repulsive swagger of self-assertion sometimes seen here is a less evil than the degrading servility and stagnant spirit of caste often seen elsewhere. The desideratum is to construct out of the alienated races and classes of men here thrown together, jarring with their distinctions and prejudices, yet under conditions of unprecedented favorableness, a new type of character, carrying in its freed and sympathetic intelligence all the vital and spiritual traditions of humanity. There are but two methods to this end: one, the intermingling of the varieties in generative descent; the other, the personal assimilation of contrasting experiences and qualities by mutual sympathetic interpretation and assumption of them. This latter process is the very process and business of the dramatic art. The true player is the most detached, versatile, imaginative, and emotional style of man, most capable of understanding, feeling with, and reproducing all other styles, best fitted, therefore, to mediate between hostile clans and creeds and reconcile the dissonant parts of society and the race in its final cosmopolite harmony.

Consequently, among the public agencies of culture destined to educate the American people out of their defects and faults into a complete accordant manhood—if, as is fondly hoped, that happy destiny be reserved for them—the dramatic art will have an unparalleled place of honor assigned to it. The dogmatic Church, so busy in toothlessly mumbling the formulas of an extinct faith that it loses sight of the living truths of God in nature and society, will be heeded less and less as it slowly dies its double death in drivel of words and drivel of ceremonies. But the plastic Stage, clearing itself of its abuses and carelessness, and receiving a new inspiration at once religious in its sacred earnestness and artistic in its free range of recreative play, will become more and more influential as it learns to exemplify the various ideals of human nature and human life set off by their graded foils, and presents the gravest teachings disguised in the finest amusements.

In the democratic idea, every man is called on to be a priest and a king unto God. Church and State, in all their forms and disguises, have sought to monopolize those august rôles for a few; but the Theatre, in the examples of its great actors, has instinctively sought to fling their secrets open to the whole world; and, when fully enlightened by the Academy, it will clearly teach what it has thus far only obscurely hinted. It will reveal the hidden secrets of power and rank, the just arts of sway, and the iniquitous artifices of despotism. And it will assert the indefeasible claim of every man, so far as he wins personal fitness and desert, to have open before him a free passage through all the spheres and heights of social humanity. The greatest player is the one who can most perfectly represent the largest scale of characters, keeping each in its exact truth and grade, yet passing freely through them all. That, too, is the moral ground and essence of democracy, whose basis is thus the same as that of the dramatic art,—namely, a free and intelligent sympathy giving men the royal freedom of mankind by right of eminent domain. The priesthood and kingship of man are universal in kind, but endlessly varied in degree, no two men on earth nor no two angels in heaven having such a monotonous uniformity that they cannot be discriminated. Each one has an original stamp and relish of native personality. The law of infinite perfection, even in liberty itself, is perfect subordination in the infinite degrees of superiority.

These opposed and balancing truths found a magnificent impersonation on the stage in Edwin Forrest, and made him pre-eminently the representative American actor. All his great parts set in emphatic relief the intrinsic sovereignty of the individual man, the ideal of a free manhood superior to all artificial distinctions or circumstances. He showed man as inherent king of himself, and also relative king over others in proportion to his true superiority in worth and weight. When Tell confronted Gessler, or Rolla appeared with the Inca, or Spartacus stood before the Emperor, or Cade defied the King, or Metamora scorned the Englishman, the titular monarch was nothing in the tremendous presence of the authentic hero. Genuine virtue, power, and nobleness took the crown and sceptre away from empty prescription. This was grand, and is the lesson the American people need to learn. It enthrones the truth, while repudiating the error, of vulgar democracy. That error would interpret the doctrine of equal rights into a flat and dead uniformity, a stagnant level of similarities; but that truth affirms an endless variety of degrees with a boundless liberty around all, each free to fit himself for all the privileges of human nature according to his ability, and entitled to enjoy those privileges in proportion to the fitness he attains. The principle of order, rank, authority, hierarchy, is as omnipotent and sacred in genuine democracy as it is in nature or the government of God. The American idea, as against the Asiatic and European, would not destroy the principle of precedence, but would make that principle the intrinsic force and merit of the individual, instead of any historic or artificial prerogative. It asserts that there must be no horizontal caste or stratum in society to prevent the vertical any more than the level circulation of the political units. It declares that there shall be no despotic fixtures reserving the most desirable and authoritative places for any arbitrary sets of persons, but that there shall be divine liberty for the ablest and best to gravitate by divine right to the highest places. That is the American idea purified and completed. That, also, is the central lesson of the dramatic art in its crowning triumphs on the popular stage. And in the half-inspired, half-conscious representation of it lay the commanding originality of Edwin Forrest, our first national tragedian.

The foregoing thoughts put us in possession of the data and place us at the point of view for an intelligent and interested survey of the field before us. And we will now proceed to the proper narrative of the biographic details, and to the critical delineation of the professional features suggested by the title of our work.

CHAPTER III.

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH.

When Edwin was born, his father, encumbered and oppressed by the debts which his failure some years before had entailed on him, was serving in a bank, at a small salary. The family, consisting then of the parents and five children, were forced to live in a very humble style, and to practise a stern economy. For many years they endured the trials and hardships of poverty almost in its extremities. Yet, by dint of industry, character, and tidiness, they managed to maintain respectable appearances and a fair position. Both the father and mother were exemplary members of the Episcopal Church, under the pastoral charge of the Rev. Doctor Pilmore, on whose Sunday services they, with their children, were regular attendants.

What they most lamented was their inability to give their boys and girls the education and accomplishments whose absence in themselves their strong judgment and refined sensibility caused them deeply to regret. But they sought to make such compensation as they could by example, by precept, by directing in the formation of their habits and the choice of their associates, and by keeping them at the public schools as long as possible.

Lorman, the eldest son, when of the proper age to earn his living, was apprenticed to a tanner and currier. William, at a later period, was set at work in a printing-office. Henrietta, the eldest daughter,—as could not be avoided,—was early taken from under the rule of the school-mistress to the side of her mother, to help in the increasing labors of the household. Edwin went constantly to the public school nearest his home, from the age of five to thirteen, together with his eldest sister, Caroline, and also, for the last six years, with his youngest sister, Eleanora.

During this period the life of the family presents little besides that plain and humble story of toil, domestic fidelity, social struggle, self-denial, and patience familiar in our country to a multitude of families in the middle and lower walks. In the mean while, duties were done, simple pleasures were enjoyed, plans were formed, hopes were disappointed, the seasons came round, the years moved on, changes occurred, experiences accumulated, as will happen to all, whether rich or poor.

The youngest son gave more striking signs of talent than any of the rest, and naturally the fonder anticipations of his parents centred in him. They meant, at any cost, if it were a possible thing, to give him such an education and training as would fit him for the Christian ministry. They were led to this determination by the counsel of their pastor, by their own pronounced religious feelings, and by the most distinctive gift of the boy himself. That gift was the marked power and taste of his elocution. It is interesting, and seems strange, as we look back now, to think of the destiny of Forrest had the original intention of his parents been carried out. Perhaps he would have become a bishop, and a judicious and influential one. It is certainly not impossible; so much do circumstances, companions, aims, duties, the daily routine of life, contribute to make us what we are. The essential germ or monad of the personality is unextinguishable, but its development may be amazingly fostered and guided or twisted and stunted. The coin of manhood remains what it is in itself, but its image and superscription are determined by the mould and die with which it is struck.

Edwin had a sweet, expressive, vigorous voice, with natural accent and inflection, free from the common mechanical mannerisms. His superiority in this respect over all his comrades was signal. With that unsparing tendency to let down every superiority, to level all distinctions, which is so characteristic of the rude democracy of the school-yard and the play-ground, his fellows nicknamed him the Spouter!

From his very first attendance at church, when a mere child in petticoats, he was much impressed by the imposing appearance and preaching of Dr. Joseph Pilmore. Father Pilmore was a large man, with a deep, rich voice, a manner of emphatic earnestness, his long powdered hair falling down his shoulders after the fashion of an Addisonian wig. The boy would not leave the pew until the old pastor came along, patted him on the head, and gave him a blessing. He would then go home, make a pulpit of a stuffed semicircular chair with a pillow placed on the top of its back for a cushion, mount into it, and preach over from memory parts of the sermon he had just heard,—with his sisters, and such other persons as might be at hand, for an audience. At such times, before he would consent to declaim, he used to insist on having his costume, namely, a pair of spectacles across his nose, and a long pair of tongs over his neck, their legs coming down his breast to represent the bands of the preacher.

To the end of his life he retained a most grateful remembrance of his first pastor. The picture of him as he used to appear in the pulpit always remained in his imagination, a venerable image, unfaded, unblurred. One favorite gesture of the reverend orator, a forcible smiting of his breast, took such hold of the young observer that it haunted him for years after he had gone upon the stage; and he found himself often involuntarily copying it, even in situations where it was not strictly appropriate.

Such were the grace, propriety, and vigor displayed by the infantile declaimer, that when he went, as he often did, to see his brother Lorman in the tannery where he was employed, the workmen would lift him upon a stone table designed for dressing leather, listen to his recitations, and reward him with their applause.

Among the most valued friends of the Forrest family at this time was an elderly Scotchman, of great cultivation of mind, gentle heart, and charming manners, who had seen much of the world, was an intense lover of nature, possessed of fine literary taste and a rare natural piety of soul. He delighted in talking over with his friend their common memories of dear old Scotland, often quoting from Ferguson, Burns, and other Caledonian celebrities. This was no less a person than the famous ornithologist, Alexander Wilson; a man of sweet character, whose pictures of birds, descriptions of nature, and effusions of sentiment can never fail to give both pleasure and edification to those who linger over his limpid and sinless pages. The little boy, fascinated by the gentle personality, as well as by the picturesque conversation, so different from that of the business or working men he usually heard, was wont, on occasions of these visits, to draw near and attend to what was said. One day his father exclaimed, "Come, Edwin, let us hear you recite the speech of the Shepherd Boy of the Grampian Hills." Wilson at once recognized the remarkable promise of the lad, and from that time took a deep interest in him. He often heard him read and declaim, corrected his faults, gave him good models of delivery, and called his attention to excellent pieces for committing to memory. He taught him several of the best poems of Robert Burns. Among these were the Dirge beginning

"When chill November's surly blast

Made fields and forests bare,"

and the exquisite verses "To Mary in Heaven,"—

"Thou lingering star with lessening ray,

That lov'st to greet the early morn."

When the eager learner had mastered a new piece, he was all alive until he could recite it to Wilson, who used to encourage and reward him with gifts of the plates of his great work on American Ornithology, which was then passing through the press. The service thus rendered was of inestimable value. The picture is beautiful: the wise and loving old man leaning in spontaneous benignity and joy over the aspiring and grateful child,—forming his taste, moulding his mind and heart. In a case like this, nothing can be more charming than the relation of teacher and pupil. It is that proper and artistic relation of experienced age and docile youth immortalized by antique sculpture in the exquisite myth of Cheiron and Achilles. Forrest never forgot his indebtedness to his early benefactor, but in his last days was fond of citing, with admiring pathos, the dying words of his old friend: "Bury me where the sun may shine on my grave and the birds sing over it."

Things were going on with the Forrest household in this modest and hopeful way, when the heaviest calamity it had ever known befell it. The death of its head, and the consequent cessation of his salary, left the family destitute of the means of support. The good and judicious mother showed herself equal to the emergency. Drying her tears and holding her heart firm, she undertook to fulfil the offices of both parents. With such help as she could get, she bought a little stock or goods and opened a millinery-shop. In the mean time the two older sons were earning a little at their trades, and the two older daughters assisted their mother. They made bonnets, and various articles of needle-work, while she worked, in her spare hours, at binding shoes. In the later years of the proud fame and wealth of Forrest, as these scenes floated back into his memory, his heart visibly swelled under his breast, and tears filled his eyes.

The youngest daughter, then eleven, was kept at school. But it was found necessary to abandon the plan of educating Edwin for the clerical profession. Reluctantly his mother took him from school, and put him at service, first, for a short time, in the printing-office of the "Aurora," under Colonel Duane, where he was known as "Little Edwin," then in a cooper-shop on the wharf, and finally in a ship-chandlery store on Race Street. This was in 1819, when he was thirteen years old.

Several years previously his taste for dramatic expression had directed his attention to the stage. He had developed a keen love for theatrical entertainments, and he let no opportunity of attending the theatre go by unimproved. He found frequent means of gratifying this desire, although his parents strongly disapproved of it. He also, in company with his brother William, joined a Thespian club, composed of boys and young men possessed with the same passion for theatricals as himself, and gave much of his leisure time to their meetings and performances. Many a time he and his fellows performed plays in a wood-shed, fitted up for the purpose, to an eager audience of boys, the price of admittance being sometimes five pins, sometimes an apple or a handful of raisins.

The place he most delighted to visit was the old South Street Theatre, long since passed away, with its great pit surmounted by a double row of boxes. The most prominent object, midway in the first tier, was what was called the Washington Box. This was adorned with the insignia of the United States, and had often been occupied by Washington and his family in the days when Philadelphia was the capital of the nation. The boy used to regard this box with intense reverence. It was in this theatre, then under the management of Charles Porter, that Forrest, a lad of eleven, made his first public appearance on any stage. The circumstances were amusing. He was in the street, playing marbles on the pavement with some other urchins, when Porter came along, and said to him, "Can you perform the part of a girl in a play?" "Why?" asked Edwin, looking up in surprise. "Because," replied the manager, "the girl who was to perform the character is sick." "Do you want me to take the part?" "Yes. Will you?" "When is it to be played?" "To-morrow night." "I will do it," answered the inconsiderate youth, triumphantly. Porter gave him a play-book, pointed out the part he was to study, and left him.

Edwin began forthwith, and was soon quite up in the part. But how to provide himself with a suitable costume for the night! This was a great difficulty. At length, bethinking him of a female acquaintance of his, whose name was Eliza Berryman, he went to her and borrowed what was needful in general, but not in particular.

Night came on, and the boy, as a substitute for a girl, was to take the part of Rosalia de Borgia, in the romantic melodrama of Rudolph, or the Robbers of Calabria. He went to the theatre and donned the dress. Finding himself in want of a bosom, he tore off some portions of scenery and stuffed them about his breast under the gown, and was ready for the curtain to rise. He had been provided by the kind Eliza with a sort of turban for the head, and for ringlets he had placed horse-hair done into a bunch of curls. The first scene displayed Rosalia de Borgia at the back of the stage, behind a barred and grated door, peering out of a prison. As she stood there, she was seen by the audience, and applauded. They could not then well discern her rugged and somewhat incongruous appearance. Pretty soon Rosalia came in front, before the foot-lights. Then at once rose a universal guffaw from the assembly. She looked about, a little disconcerted, for the cause of this merriment. To her intense sorrow and disgust, she found that her gown and petticoat were quite too short, and revealed to the audience a most remarkably unfeminine pair of feet, ankles, and legs.

He stood it for a time, until a boy in the pit, one of his mates, whom he had told that he was going to play, and who was there to see him, yelled out, "The heels and the big shoes! Hi yi! hi yi! Look at the legs and the feet!" Forrest, placing his hand over his mouth, turned to the boy, and huskily whispered, "Look here, chap, you wait till the play is done, and I'll lick you like hell!" Then the boy in the pit bawled out, "Oh, she swears! she swears!" The audience were convulsed with laughter, the curtain came down, and poor Rosalia de Borgia, all perspiration, was hustled off the stage in disgrace.

This ludicrous failure was his first, and, with one exception, his last, appearance in a female part.

But he was not of a strain to give up in discomfiture. He determined to appear again, and in something which he knew he could do well. Accordingly, having prepared himself thoroughly in the famous epilogue written by Goldsmith for Lee Lewis in the character of Harlequin, he asked the manager to allow him another chance on the stage of the South Street Theatre. Porter replied, rather roughly, "Oh, you be damned! you have disgraced us enough already!" Deeply aggrieved by this rebuff, young Forrest yet resolved to speak his piece at any rate. So, one night, dressed in tight pantaloons and a close round jacket, he went behind the scenes, got some paint of the scene-painter, and painted his clothes, as well as he could, with stripes and diamonds, in resemblance of a harlequin. Then, watching an opportunity, in the absence of the manager from the stage, at the ringing down of the curtain he suddenly sprang before the foot-lights, and, to the astonishment of the audience, began,—

"Hold, prompter, hold! a word before your nonsense;

I'd speak a word or two to ease my conscience.

My pride forbids it ever should be said

My heels eclipsed the honors of my head."

At the word "heels" the audience took the joke, and, recognizing the boy, loudly applauded him. Encouraged thus, he went on, and spoke the whole epilogue in a most creditable manner, with thunders of applause from the audience, and from manager Porter too, who had now come in. Concluding with the last line,—

"And at one bound he saves himself—like me,"—

Forrest turned a hand-spring and a flip-flap, and made his exit, to the complete amazement of everybody in the theatre. He was vociferously encored, again made his appearance, turned his flip-flap, and spoke his piece even better than before. Encored still again, he did not come back, but betook himself to his home as soon as possible, rejoicing in the belief that the glory of his present triumph would offset the shame of his previous fiasco.

Somewhat later he was duly announced in the bills, and repeated the performance between the play and the after-piece, with as good success as on the first occasion.

He kept his word with the boy in the pit, whose pointed remarks and loud laughter had so much annoyed and provoked him. He inflicted the promised thrashing, though—as he said, in relating the incident more than fifty years later—it was one of the toughest jobs he ever undertook. As soon as the combatants were satisfied, the victor and the victim made up, shook hands, and remained ever afterwards firm friends.

A little domestic scene which occurred about this time may fitly be introduced here, as illustrating the character and influence of the mother, and also, as will appear in a subsequent chapter, the assimilating docility of the child. It was a Sunday afternoon, in the summer. The tired and careful mother sat at the open window, the sunshine streaming across the floor, gazing at the passers in the street, and musing, perhaps, on times long gone by. Edwin was turning the leaves of a large pictorial copy of the Bible. A sudden explosion of laughter was heard from him. "What are you laughing at, my boy? It seems unbecoming, with that book in your hands." "Why, mother, I cannot help it; it is so absurd. Here is a picture of the grapes of Eshcol; and the bunches of them are so big and heavy that it takes two men, with a pole across their shoulders, to carry them along! Is it not funny?" "Edwin, come to me," replied the mother, with calm seriousness. Taking his hand in hers, and looking steadily in his eyes, she said, "Do you not think it very presumptuous and conceited in you, so young, so ignorant, knowing only the climate and fruits of Pennsylvania, to set yourself up to pronounce judgment in this way on the artist who most likely had at his service the experience of travellers in all countries? It is more than probable that in those tropical climes where the Bible was written the vines might grow almost into trees, and bear clusters of grapes ten times larger than any you ever saw. Modesty is one of the best traits in a young person. I want you to remember never again to laugh at the fancied ignorance and absurdity of another, when perhaps the ignorance and absurdity are all your own." However often he may have failed to practise the lesson, yet when, fifty-five years afterwards, the old actor related the incident, the beating of his heart, the tenderness of his voice, and the moisture in his eyes, turned reverently towards the portrait of his mother on the wall, showed how profoundly the influence of that hour had sunk into his soul.

When Master Forrest was in the first part of his fourteenth year, he chanced one evening to be in the audience of a lecturer, in the old Tivoli Garden Theatre, on Market Street, who was discoursing on the properties of nitrous oxide, or, as it is more commonly called, laughing-gas. The lecturer invited any of his auditors who desired to come forward and inhale the exhilarating aura. The chance was one just suited to the disposition of our hero. He stepped up and applied his mouth and nostrils to the bag. In a moment, as the air began to work, his ruling passion broke forth. Striking out right and left, to the no slight consternation of those nearest him, he advanced to the front of the stage, and declaimed a famous passage from the stage-copy of Shakspeare,—

"What ho! young Richmond, ho! 'tis Richard calls:

I hate thee for thy blood of Lancaster,"—

with extraordinary energy and effect. John Swift, an eminent lawyer of that day, and a very cultivated and generous man, was so struck by the dramatic talent and force of the lad that he took the pains to seek him out and make his acquaintance, befriending him in the noblest manner, and often thereafter giving him kind counsel and assistance.

Despite his constantly-growing zeal and devotion to dramatic matters, Edwin kept his situation in the ship-chandlery store, and was tolerably faithful to its duties. But his heart was not in the business. The counter and the ledger had no charms for him. All his young enthusiasm was for the play-book and the stage. His employer often found him in a corner conning Shakspeare, or in the back office practising declamation. He said to him one day, with a shake of his wiseacre head, "Ah, boy, this theatrical infatuation will be your ruin! The way to thrive is to be attentive to trade. Did you ever know a play-actor to get rich?" But all this prudential advice, this chill preaching of the shop, was utterly ineffectual on the strong imaginative bent and passionate ambition it encountered.

While carrying parcels home to the customers of the firm, he sometimes met with such adventures as a boy of his high and pugnacious spirit would be likely to meet with in those times, when wrestling and fighting were much more common, especially among boys, than they are now. On a certain occasion, jostled and jeered by an older and bigger boy than himself, he said, "You wait till I can deliver this bundle and get back here, and I will fight you to your heart's content." The fellow agreed to it. Away hied Edwin, and deposited his goods. He then ran home and put on an old suit of clothes, to be in better fighting trim. His mother asked him what he was going to do; and when he explained, she begged him not to go, and used such arguments as she could command to impress him with the wickedness and vulgarity of such brutal encounters. But all in vain. "Mother," he said, "I have pledged my word; I must do it. It would be mean not to." And he tore away, repaired to the rendezvous, and, after a tough bout, gave his insulter a terrible thrashing, and went quietly back to the ship-chandlery. It must be confessed that, though inwardly tender and generous, he was rough, easy to quarrel with, and not slow to go to the extremes of fists and heels.

But one of the severest traits in him, all his life, one of the deepest characteristics of his individuality, was the barbaric intensity of his wrath against those who wronged him, the Indian-like bitterness and tenacity of the spirit of revenge in his breast when aroused by what he thought any wanton injury. He never laid claim to the spirit of saintliness, but rather trod it under foot, as affectation, pitiful weakness, or hypocrisy. This marked a gross limit of his moral sensibility in his own personal relations, though he could keenly appreciate the finest touches of abnegation and magnanimity in others. To justice, as he saw it, he was always loyal. But, when his selfhood was wounded, the pain of the bruise not rarely, perhaps, made him a little blind or perverse. Two anecdotes of his boyhood throw light on this point. In the one example he was, as it would seem, morally without excuse; in the other, pardonable, but scarcely to be approved.

He was eating an apple in the street, when he came to a horse attached to a baker's cart, standing beside the curb-stone. He amused himself by holding the apple under the horse's nose, and, as often as the animal tried to bite it, suddenly snatching it away, and fetching him a blow on the mouth. At that mischievous moment the driver of the cart came up, and, crying out, "What are you doing there, you damned little scoundrel?" gave him a piercing cut across the leg with his whip. The little fellow limped off in excruciating pain, but carefully marked his enemy. The passion for revenge burned in him. He kept a sharp lookout. Within a week he spied the driver a short distance ahead. He picked up a stone, took good aim, and, striking him on the back of the head, knocked him from his cart into the street. He then dismissed the subject from his mind, satisfied that he had squared accounts. Many would hold that, instead of squaring accounts, he had only made a bad matter worse. But such was his way of regarding it; and the business of a biographer is to tell the truth.

The other instance is impressive in its teaching. On a cold winter morning he was trundling along the sidewalk a wheelbarrow loaded with articles from the store. A Quaker, very tall and portly, dressed in the richest primness of the costume of his sect, meeting him, ordered him, in a very authoritative tone, to move off into the street. He apologized, expostulating that he was weary, the load was hard for him to carry, the sidewalk was much easier for him, and was amply wide enough for the few people then out. Without another word the sanctimonious old tyrant seized hold of the wheelbarrow, tipped it over into the street, and, pushing the boy aside, walked on. The blood of young Forrest boiled with indignation so that his brain seemed ready to burst. The ground was covered slightly with snow. He sank on his knees on it and tried in vain to pull up a paving-stone, to hurl at his tormentor. Weeping bitterly with baffled rage, he gathered his scattered load together and started on, cursing the cruel injustice to which he had been forced to submit. For years and years after, he said, the association of this outrage was so envenomed in his memory that whenever he saw a Quaker he had to make an effort not instinctively to hate him. Such wrongs as this, inflicted on a sensitive child, often leave scars which rankle through life, permanently embittering and deforming the character. No generous nature but will take the warning, and considerately try to be ever just and kind to the young. In the bearing and effect of early experiences on subsequent character, it is profoundly and even wonderfully true that as the twig is bent the tree is inclined.

The kind friend and patron young Forrest had won by his exhibition at the Tivoli Garden did not forget him, but continued to give him good advice and encouragement. About a year afterwards he introduced him to the managers of the Walnut Street Theatre, Messrs. Wood and Warren. In consequence of this friendly intercession, and of his own promise, he was enabled to make his formal début, on the stage of the Walnut Street Theatre, on the evening of November 27th, 1820, in the character of Norval. His success was decisive. The leading Philadelphia newspaper said, "Of the part of Norval, we must say that it was as uncommon in the performance as it was extraordinary in just conception and exemption from the idea of artifice. We mean that the sentiment of the character obtained such full possession of the youth as to take away in appearance every consideration of an audience or a drama, and to give, as it were, the natural speaking of the shepherd boy suddenly revealed by instinct to be the son of Douglas. We were much surprised at the excellence of his elocution, his self-possession in speech and gesture, and a voice that, without straining, was of such volume and fine tenor as to carry every tone and articulation to the remotest corner of the theatre. We trust that this young gentleman will find the patronage to which his extraordinary ripeness of faculty and his modest deportment entitle him."

It is certainly interesting to find in this, the first criticism of the first regular appearance of Forrest, in the fifteenth year of his age, a distinct indication of his most prominent characteristics throughout his whole histrionic career, namely, his earnest realism, his noble voice, his accurate elocution, and his steady poise. The notice was from the pen of William Duane, of the "Aurora," then one of the ablest and most experienced editors in the country, and afterwards Secretary of the Treasury under General Jackson.

The play was repeated December 2d. December 29th he sustained the part of Frederick, in Lovers' Vows; and January 6th, 1821, he assumed the rôle of Octavian, in The Mountaineers. On the last occasion, which was his benefit, the following notice was published in one of the morning papers: "The very promising youth, Master Forrest, who has appeared twice as Young Norval, and once as Frederick, is to perform Octavian this evening, and the profits of the house are for his benefit. We trust that this modest and promising youth will obtain the notice to which he is certainly well entitled from the lovers of the drama and of native genius."

Though the receipts from these his first four performances were not unusually large, the popular applause and the critical verdict were flattering. The results of the experiment confirmed his bent and fixed his resolution for life.

During this year, that is, before he was fifteen years old, he made another appearance on the stage, under circumstances which show the native boldness and resolution of his character. Without advice or assistance of any kind, he went alone to the proprietors of the Prune Street Theatre and asked them to let it to him on his own account for a single night. The proposition surprised them, but they admired the pluck of the boy so much that they granted his request. He engaged the company to support him, got his brother William to print the bills announcing him in the character of Richard the Third, drew a good house, and came off with a liberal quantity of applause and a small pecuniary gain.

It was at this date, when Forrest was in his fifteenth year, that he, who was destined to inspire so many poems, drew from the prophetic muse of an admirer the first verses ever composed on him. They were written by the Hon. Joseph R. Chandler, one of the most distinguished citizens of Philadelphia, and then editor of the "United States Gazette."

"Turn we from State to view the mimic Stage,

Which gives the form and pressure of the age.

Each season brings its wonders, and each year

Some unfledged buskins on our boards appear;

And Covent Garden sends us stage-sick trash

To gather laurels or to pocket cash.

A Phillipps comes to sing us Braham's airs,

And Wallack, Finn, and Maywood strut with theirs.

These sickly meteors dim our hemisphere,

While rare as comets Cookes and Keans appear:

These fopling twinklers, with their borrowed glare,

Will meet our censure when we cease to stare.

But the bright sun that gives our stage its rays

Still lights and warms us by its innate blaze.

We have a power to gild our drama's age,—

Cooper's our Sun, his orbit is our stage.

Long may he shine, by sense and taste approved,

By fancy reverenced, and by genius loved!

And when retiring, mourned by every grace,

May Forrest rise to fill his envied place!

Dear child of genius! round thy youthful brow

Taste, wit, and beauty bind thy laurel now.

No foreign praise thy native worth need claim;

No aid extrinsic heralds forth thy name;

No titled patron's power thy merit decked:—

The blood of Douglas will itself protect!"

The insight and the foresight indicated in the application of the last line to the yet undeveloped boy are remarkable, and will thrill every one who is familiar with the bearing and poise of the mature actor and man. For in him the massive majesty of pose, the slow weight of gesture, the fixedness of look, the ponderous gutturality and sweetness of articulative energy, all revealed an intensity and equilibrium of selfhood, a deep and vast power of personality, not often equalled. He was nothing if not independent and competent to his own protection.

The eminent English tragedian Cooper was at that time living in Philadelphia, in the intervals between his starring engagements. He was an actor of pronounced and signal merits, and of great professional authority, from his varied and long experience. Edwin had seen him in several of his chief parts, with docile quickness had caught important impressions from his performances, and was full of admiration for him. When, after his early successes, he had determined to become an actor himself, he longed for the sympathy and counsel of the illustrious veteran. Accordingly, armed with an introduction, he went to see the old king in his private state. He was received kindly, but with some loftiness. Cooper told him he must not trust to his raw triumphs as an amateur, but must be willing to serve a regular apprenticeship to the art, and climb the ladder round by round, not trying to mount by great skips. The best men in every profession, he said, were those who had gone through all its experiences. The greatest lawyers he had known in England, he declared, had begun their career by sweeping out the law-office. Edwin, thinking his adviser meant him to stoop to the position of a supernumerary or call-boy, rather petulantly, but tellingly, answered, "When one knows how to read, he needs not to learn his letters." The old man was nettled by the pert reply, and the interview closed with coolness, though not, as has been reported, with anger or alienation. They were ever afterwards good friends, frequently meeting, and the veteran not only gave him much useful instruction, but also used his influence to secure for the novice an engagement in Boston. That there was no quarrel, no ingratitude, but, on the contrary, both a thankful appreciation and a generous return from the boyish aspirant and pupil, we shall, on a future page, cite the testimony of the old actor himself, amidst the decay and want of his last days.

The advice of Cooper was based on his own experience, and was sound. He himself, at fourteen, had engaged under Stephen Kemble. Kemble kept him a whole season without a single appearance. When he did appear, it was as a substitute for another, in the character of Malcolm, in Macbeth. He forgot his part, and was actually hissed off the stage. But he persevered, and slowly worked his way to the very summit of the profession. His advice to Edwin did not contemplate so low a descent as the boy inferred, but only that he should be modest and studious, begin in relatively humble parts, and grow by degrees. Forrest of his own accord, or perhaps in consequence of Cooper's words, really followed exactly this course a little later.

Although retaining his place in the store, his heart was given to the theatre, and the dearest exercises of his soul were devoted to the cultivation of the powers which, he hoped, would enable him at some future time to shine as he had seen others shine. Not only had Cooper presented a model to his admiring fancy, Edmund Kean also had electrified his senses and indelibly stamped his imagination. It was only two nights after his own benefit as Octavian that Kean began an engagement of twelve nights in the same theatre. And of all in the crowds who waited on this peerless meteor of the stage, melted at the pathos of his genius, or trembled before the irresistible bursts of his power, in not one did the exhibition kindle such imperishable wonder and such idolatrous admiration as in the fond proud boy who was himself aspiring to become a great actor, and who drew from what he then saw a large share of the inspiration which afterwards urged him so high.

The nature of Edwin Forrest in his fifteenth year was remarkably developed and mature, especially when we consider the small advantages he had enjoyed. He was distinguished from most youths of his age by the intensity and tenacity of his passion and purpose, and by the vividness with which the objects of his thought were pictured in his mind. A consequence of these attributes was a strong personal magnetism, a power of attracting and deeply interesting susceptible natures with whom he came in contact.

He was not without touches of a poetic and sentimental vein, leading him sometimes to indulge in melancholy reveries. The following lines were composed by him at this time,—that is, in 1820. They were found among his posthumous papers, inscribed in his own hand, "Verses, or Doggerel, written in my Boyhood":

"Scenes of my childhood, hail!

All hail, beloved years

When Hope first spread life's sail,

Ere sorrow came, or tears.

Hail to the blissful hours

Of life's resplendent morn,

When all around was flowers,

And flowers without a thorn!

"Hail, guardians of my youth!

Hail their instructions given,

Showing the path of Truth,

The flowery way to heaven!

All hail the reverend place

Where first I lisped His name,

Where first my infant lips

God's praises did proclaim!

Inestimable precious scenes,

Now faded and all past,

Can you not fling one ray serene

To cheer me on at last?

Ah, no! Life's winter has set in,

And storms and tempests rise;

A chaos infinite of sin

Sweeps full before my eyes.

"This frail habiliment of soul

Must shortly cease to be,—

Some planet then my goal,—

Home for eternity.

Another document from his pen at about the same time will certainly interest readers who recall the circumstances of his situation then, and the facts of his subsequent career. It is the earliest application he ever made—and it was in vain—to the manager of a theatre for an engagement.

"Philada., Dec. 6, 1820.

"To Mr. James H. Caldwell, New Orleans.

"Sir,—Having understood you intend to open your theatre in the city of New Orleans some time during this month, I, by the advice of a number of friends, have taken the liberty of addressing you relative to an engagement. I am desirous of performing in your company for six or eight nights, in such parts as I shall name at the foot of this letter.

"I acted last season in Messrs. Warren and Wood's theatre for a few nights, and drew respectable and profitable houses, which is a difficult matter to do at this season in Philadelphia. For my capacity I refer you to the managers above named, or to Col. John Swift, of this city. Should you think it troublesome to write to these gentlemen on the subject, I will procure the necessary papers and forward them to you. If you conclude to receive me, I should like to hear on what terms, and so forth. Address care of John R. Baker and Son, 61 Race St., Philada.

"Yours truly,

"Edwin Forrest.

"Characters:

• Douglas,
• Octavian,
• Chamont,
• Zanga,
• Zaphna,
• Tancred."

Among the first letters ever written by Edwin were three addressed to his brother William, who had given up working as a printer and become an actor, and was then absent on a professional engagement at Harrisburg, Reading, and York. When we remember that these letters were by a boy of sixteen, we shall not think them discreditable to him. They throw light on his character at that time, and show what he was doing. They also draw aside the veil of privacy a little, and give us some glimpses of the domestic drama of his home, the bereaved family industriously struggling to maintain itself, watched over perhaps from the other side by the still-conscious spirit of its departed head.

"Philadelphia, 4th Feb'y, 1822.

"Mr. Wm. Forrest, Harrisburg.

"Dear Brother,—On Saturday evening last I performed Zaphna, in Mahomet, at Walnut Street Theatre, to a pretty good house, which would have been better had not Phillipps, the celebrated vocalist, been announced to appear on the Monday following. I played on the above evening better than ever I did before. After the murder of my father, repeated bravos rose from all quarters. Last scene, bravos again,—curtain fell amidst bravos kept up till the farce began and was forced to be suspended. Mr. Wood called me to his apartment, and told me to go on, they were calling for me. I informed him that I had never appeared before an audience in that manner, and begged him to go on for me. He did so, and asked the audience what was their pleasure. Engagement! engagement! from every side. Mr. Wood said he had heard nothing to the contrary; he was happy that Master Forrest had pleased the audience, and if they wished it he should appear again. The people testified their approbation, and the farce was suffered to proceed in peace.

"I expect to appear with Mr. Phillipps this or next week. I anticipate that they will hiss him when he appears to-night. More of this by-and-by. Please write as early as possible, and let me know how you make out. We are well, with the exception of myself. I have a severe cold. I remain

"Your affectionate brother,

"Edwin Forrest.

"P.S.—Heavy snow falling."

"Philadelphia, 15th April, 1822.

"Mr. William Forrest, Reading.

"Dear Brother,—I received your esteemed favor of the 13th instant, and carefully noticed its contents. My brother, you complain of my not writing to you since your arrival in Reading. The reason is this. A gentleman called at the house and informed me that you would return to the city on Saturday last. Lorman and I were on the point of coming up to you, but affairs interfered.

"Lorman called on Johnson, according to your request. He informs him that you can get work at the printing business without any difficulty, the printers being very busy at present in this city. Therefore I would advise you to quit the unfair Williams as early as possible. If you fail in getting a situation at your trade, Stanislas will engage you on your arrival to act in a good line of business. Therefore you have a double advantage. The Walnut Street Theatre closes for the season on Friday next with the new comedy of the Spy, written by a young gentleman of New York. To-morrow evening I perform Richard Third for my own benefit. Joel Barr called here a week or ten days after he had been in town, to tell us you were well. Leave that pander of a manager directly; do not stay another moment with him, is the advice of your affectionate brother,

"Edwin.

"P.S.—Henrietta says she is sorry you have two and a half shirts, but that is better than she expected.

"Billy McCorkle says $12 ought to have been an object to you. Ah, he says, it was a bad day's work when you left him!

"We expect you by the return stage. So pack up your tatters and follow the drum.

"E. F."

"Philadelphia, 1st June, 1822.

"Mr. William Forrest, York, Pa.

"Dear Brother,—I take this opportunity of addressing myself to you and asking your pardon for my ungrounded belief that you had been guilty of misusing my letters. I have every reason now to believe that Mrs. Allen must have invented some lie and told it to Stanislas.

"I have the pleasure of informing you that your friend Sam Barr is married. Therefore wish him joy; for you know a man entering into such a state stands in need of the good wishes of his friends. I am sorry to relate that Sinclair is dead.

"'There would have been a time for such a word.'

"The actors are not undoing themselves at Tivoli. A young gentleman by the name of Ondes makes his appearance there this evening in the character of Octavian. Mrs. Riddle has left the company.

"I leave the firm in Race Street this day. When you can spare from your salary the sum of $5, I wish you would send it to me, as I at present stand in much need, and ere long I will transmit it to you again. We are all well, and hope that this will find you so. Write as early as possible; in expectation whereof I remain

"Yours, affectionately,

"Edwin F.

"P.S.—Mother is longing for your return, and I hope it will not be long ere our wishes are fulfilled."

For the next two months he was in earnest training, developing the muscles of his body and the faculties of his mind, practising athletics and studying rôles, looking out meanwhile for some regular engagement The following letter speaks for itself:

"Philadelphia, 7th Sept., 1822.

"James Hewitt, Esq., Boston.

"Sir,—Having understood from Mr. Utt that you were about to form a company of actors to go to Charleston, I have, by the advice of the above-named gentleman, written to know whether you would afford me an engagement in your concern or not, I having a desire to visit the aforesaid city. As you must already be acquainted with the line of business I have supported in Messrs. Wood and Warren's Theatre, it is useless to say anything farther on that head, referring you to Mr. Utt, Messrs. Wood and Warren, John Swift, Esq., of Philadelphia, or to Mr. Thomas A. Cooper: the latter gentleman having procured me an engagement in Mr. Dickson's theatre, Boston, which I declined, thinking it better to be more remote, for some years at least, from the principal cities.

"If, therefore, you have any idea of giving me a situation in a respectable line, juvenile business, you will hear farther from me by addressing a line to 77 Cedar Street, Philadelphia.

"Your most obedient servant,

"(In haste.) Edwin Forrest.

"P.S.—I should be pleased to learn your resolve as early as possible, so that in case you decline my services I may be enabled elsewhere to make arrangements."

This letter, like the one he had two years before addressed to Caldwell, was fruitless. But his mind was firmly made up that he would persevere until his efforts were successful. And, a few days later, the opportunity he sought presented itself, and he left home to enter in earnest on a regular apprenticeship to the vocation he had chosen.

Here, for a little space, we drop the thread of personal narrative for the purpose of introducing a sketch of the origin and significance of the dramatic art. As the subject of this biography is to be an actor, his character to be shaped by the peculiar influences of the theatrical profession, his career and fame to be permanently associated with the history of that profession in America, an exposition of the origin and nature of the drama, of its different forms and applications, and of its personal uses, will bring the reader to the succeeding chapters with a fuller appreciation of their various topics, and give him some data for estimating the place which the art of acting has held, now holds, and is destined hereafter to hold, in the experience of mankind.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN, VARIETY, AND PERSONAL USES OF
THE DRAMATIC ART.