Shakespeare was his Bible. The stage had been his cradle. He continued all
his days a student. In him met the meditative and the observing faculties.
In his love of fishing, his love of painting, his love of music we see the
brooding, contemplative spirit joined to the alert in mental force and
foresight when he addressed himself to the activities and the objectives
of the theater. He was a thorough stage manager, skillful, patient and
upright. His company was his family. He was not gentler with the children
and grandchildren he ultimately drew about him than he had been with the
young men and young women who had preceded them in his employment and
instruction.
He was nowise ashamed of his calling. On the contrary, he was proud of it.
His mother had lived and died an actress. He preferred that his progeny
should follow in the footsteps of their forebears even as he had done.
It is beside the purpose to inquire, as was often done, what might have
happened had he undertaken the highest flights of tragedy; one might as
well discuss the relation of a Dickens to a Shakespeare. Sir Henry
Irving and Sir Charles Wyndham in England, M. Coquelin in France, his
contemporaries--each had his _metier_. They were perfect in their art
and unalike in their art. No comparison between them can be justly drawn.
I was witness to the rise of all three of them, and have followed them
in their greatest parts throughout their most brilliant and eminent and
successful careers, and can say of each as of Mr.
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