son. after Smith; but, I thought, very unjustly. Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the eye with a certain gayety of perHe brought with him no somber recollections of tragedy. He had not to expiate the fault of having pleased beforehand in lofty declamation. He had no sins of Hamlet or of Richard to atone for. His failure in these parts was a passport to success in one of so opposite a tendency. But, as far as I could judge, the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal incapacity than he had to answer for. His harshest tones in this part came steeped and dulcified in good humor. He made his defects a grace. His exact declamatory manner, as he managed it, only served to convey the points of his dialogue with more precision. It seemed to head the shafts to carry them deeper. Not one of his sparkling sentences was lost. I remember minutely how he delivered each in succession, and cannot by any effort imagine how any of them could be altered for the better. No man could deliver brilliant dialogue — the dialogue of Congreve or of Wycherley - because none understood it, half so well as John Kemble. His Valentine, in "Love for Love," was to my recollection, faultless. He flagged sometimes in the intervals of tragic passion. He would slumber over the level parts of an heroic character. His Macbeth has been known to nod. But he always seemed to me to be particularly alive to pointed and witty dialogue. The relaxing levities of tragedy have not been touched by any since him; the playful courtbred spirit in which he condescended to the players in Hamlet, the sportive relief which he threw into the darker shades of Richard, disappeared with him. He had his sluggish moods, his torpors; but they were the halting-stones and resting-place of his tragedy-politic savings and fetches of the breath husbandry of the lungs, where nature pointed him to be an economist rather, I think, than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst, less painful than the eternal tormenting unappeasable vigilance, the "lidless dragon eyes," of present fashionable tragedy. THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES. JANUARY, 1798. I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions, I have been laughing, I have been carousing, I loved a love once, fairest among women: I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man: Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood: Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse, Seeking to find the old familiar faces. Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother! For some they have died, and some they have left me, HESTER. WHEN maidens such as Hester die, A month or more hath she been dead, A springing motion in her gait, Of pride and joy no common rate, I know not by what name beside Her parents held the Quaker rule, But she was trained in Nature's school- A waking eye, a prying mind, ON AN INFANT DYING AS SOON AS BORN. I SAW where in the shroud did lurk A curious frame of Nature's work. A nameless piece of Babyhood, Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying; So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb She did but ope an eye, and put A clear beam forth, then straight up shut Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below? Shall we say that Nature blind Checked her hand and changed her mind, Just when she had exactly wrought A finished pattern without fault? Could she flag, or could she tire, Or lacked she the Promethean fire (With her nine moons' long workings sickened) That should thy little limbs have quickened? Limbs so firm they seemed to assure Life of health, and days mature: And cut the branch, to save the shock And wisest clerks have missed the mark, That has his day; while shriveled crones Which pale death did late eclipse; Music framed for infant's glee, Whistle never tuned for thee: Though thou want'st not, thou shalt have them, Loving hearts were they which gave them. Let not one be missing; nurse, See them laid upon the hearse IN MY OWN ALBUM. FRESH clad from heaven in robes of white, Thou wert my soul, an album bright, A spotless leaf: but thought and care, And Time with heaviest hand of all, Hath stamped sad dates he can't recall; And error gilding worst designs Like speckled snake that strays and shines - And vice hath left his ugly blot; |