it was to simulate distortions, – to writhe, for example, from the supposed effect of poison, to gasp, to roll the eyes, &c. These were melodramatic effects. But if pain or death had to be simulated, or any sudden or violent shock, let them be shown, he said, in their mental rather than in their physical signs. The picture presented might be as sombre as the darkest Rembrandt; but it must be noble in its outlines, truthful, picturesque, but never repulsive, mean, or commonplace. It must suggest the heroic, the divine in human nature, and not the mere everyday struggles or tortures of this life, whether in joy or sorrow, despair or hopeless grief. Under every circumstance the graceful, the ideal, the beautiful, should be given side by side with the real.
I have always felt what a happy circumstance it was for a shy and sensitive temperament like mine, that my first steps in my art should have been guided and encouraged by a nature so generous and sympathetic as Mr Kemble's. He made me feel that I was in the right road to success, and gave me courage by speaking warmly of my natural gifts of voice, &c., and praising my desire to study and improve, and my readiness in seizing his meaning and profiting by his suggestions. How different it was when, shortly afterwards, I came under Mr Macready's influence ! Equally great in their art, Na ture had cast the men in entirely different moulds. Each helped me, but by processes wholly unlike. Tho one, while pointing out what was wrong, brought the balm of encouragement and hope; the other, like the surgeon who "cuts beyond the wound to make the cure more certain," was merciless to the feelings, where he thought a fault or a defect might so best be pruned away. Both were my true friends, and were most kind to me, each in his own way of showing kindness. Yet it was well for my self-distrustful nature that the gentler kindness came first.
Mr Kemble never lost an opportunity of making you happy. When Joanna Baillie's play, "The Separation," was produced within two months of my first appearance, I had, in the heroine Margaret, a very difficult part – quite unlike any I had previously acted or even studied. The story turns upon a wife's hearing that before their marriage her husband had murdered her brother. The play opens with the wife learning the terrible truth, just as the tidings reach her that her husband has returned safely from battle, and is close at hand. Of course "the separation" ensues. It must have been a great trouble to Mr Kemble, who played Garcio, the husband, to study a new part at that period of his career, and I wonder that he undertook it. You may imagine how nervous and anxious I was at attempting the leading character in a play never before acted, and one, moreover, with which I had little sympathy. During the first performance Mr Kemble also appeared very nervous, and at times seemed at a loss for his words. He was deaf, too, – not very deaf, but sufficiently so to make the prompter's voice of no use to him. Happily I was able on several occasions, being close to him, to whisper the words. How I knew them I can hardly tell, because we had not copies of the play to study from, but only our own manuscript parts. But I had heard him repeat them at rehearsal, and they had fixed themselves in my memory. Naturally I thought nothing of this at the time. The next morning,
