HE WAS BORN IN ALBANY, N.Y.,

JULY 26, 1831.

HE DIED IN PHILADELPHIA, PENN.,

NOVEMBER 19, 1891.

By Virtue cherished, by Affection mourned, By Honour hallowed and by Fame adorned, Here FLORENCE sleeps, and o'er his sacred rest

Each word is tender and each thought is blest.

Long, for his loss, shall pensive Mem'ry

show,

Through Humour's mask, the visage of her

woe,

Day breathe a darkness that no sun dispels, And Night be full of whispers and farewells; While patient Kindness, shadow-like and

dim,

Droops in its loneliness, bereft of him,

Feels its sad doom and sure decadence

nigh,

For how should Kindness live, when he could die !

The eager heart, that felt for every grief, The bounteous hand, that loved to give

relief,

The honest smile, that blessed where'er it

lit,

The dew of pathos and the sheen of wit, The sweet, blue eyes, the voice of melting tone,

That made all hearts as gentle as his own, The Actor's charm, supreme in royal thrall, That ranged through every field and shone in all

For these must Sorrow make perpetual moan,

Bereaved, benighted, hopeless, and alone?
Ah, no; for Nature does no act amiss,
And Heaven were lonely but for souls like
this.

M

XI.

HENRY IRVING AND ELLEN TERRY IN THE

IN

MERCHANT OF VENICE.

his beautiful production of The Merchant of Venice Henry Irving restored the fifth act, the jailer scene, and the casket scenes in full, and the piece was acted with strict fidelity to Shakespeare. With Ellen Terry for Portia that achievement became feasible. With an ordinary actress in that character the comedy might be tediousnotwithstanding its bold and fine contrasts of character, its fertility of piquant incident, and its lovely poetry. Radiant with her fine spirit and beautiful presence, and animated and controlled in every fibre by his subtle and authoritative intellect, judiciously cast and correctly dressed and mounted, Henry Irving's revival of The Merchant of Venice captured the public fancy; and in every quarter it was sincerely felt and freely proclaimed that here, at last, was the perfection of stage display. That suc

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cess has never faded. The performance was round, symmetrical, and thorough - every detail being kept subordinate to intelligent general effect, and no effort being made toward overweening individual display.

Shakespeare's conception of Shylock has long been in controversy. Burbage, who acted the part in Shakespeare's presence, wore a red wig and was frightful in form and aspect. The red wig gives a hint of low comedy, and it may be that the great actor made use of low comedy expedients to cloak Shylock's inveterate malignity and sinister purpose. Dogget, who played the part in Lord Lansdowne's alteration of Shakespeare's piece, turned Shylock into farce. Macklin, when he restored the original play to the stage- at Drury Lane, February 14, 1741 wore a red hat, a peaked beard, and a loose black gown, playing Shylock as a serious, almost a tragic part, and laying great emphasis upon a display of revengeful passion and hateful malignity. So terrible was he, indeed, that persons who saw him on the stage in that character not infrequently drew the inference and kept the belief that he was personally a monster. His look was iron

visaged; the cast of his manners was relentless and savage. Quin said that his face contained not lines but cordage. In portraying the contrasted passions of joy for Antonio's losses and grief for Jessica's elopement he poured forth all his fire. When he whetted his knife, in the trial scene, he was silent, grisly, ominous, and fatal. No human touch, no hint of race-majesty or of religious fanaticism, tempered the implacable wickedness of that hateful ideal. Pope, who saw that Shylock, hailed it as "the Jew that Shakespeare drew" - and Pope, among other things, was one of the editors of Shakespeare. Cooke, who had seen Macklin's Shylock, and also those of Henderson, King, Kemble, and Yates, adopted, maintained, and transmitted the legend of Macklin. Edmund Kean, who worshipped Cooke, was unquestionably his imitator in Shylock; but it seems to have been Edmund Kean who, for the first time, gave prominence to the Hebraic majesty and fanatical self-consecration of that hateful but colossal character. Jerrold said that Kean's Shylock was like a chapter of Genesis. cready whose utterance of "Nearest his heart" was the blood-curdling keynote of his whole infernal ideal-declared the part to

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