»5i ARTISTS AND AUTHORS last letter, saying sadly, but fondly : " God bless you ever, my dear and much- beloved friend." When the morning of December 12th came, his servant, hearing no sound in his chamber at his general hour of rising, became alarmed, opened his master's door, and found there, cold in death upon his bed, the form of the great trage- dian. His arms were crossed upon his bosom, and he seemed to be at rest. The stroke had come suddenly. With little warning, and without pain, he had passed away. The dead man's will was found to contain several bequests to old friends and servants, and an elaborate scheme by which his fortune, in the hands of trustees, was to be applied to the erection and support of a retreat for aged actors, to be called "The Edwin Forrest Home." The idea had been long in his mind, and careful directions were drawn up for its practical working ; but the trustees found themselves powerless to realize fully the hopes and wishes of the testator. A settlement had to be made to the divorced wife, who acted liberally toward the estate ; but the amount withdrawn seriously crippled it, as it was deprived at once of a large sum of ready money. Other legal difficulties arose. And thus the great ambition of the tragedian to be a benefactor to his profession was des- tined to come almost to naught. Of this happily little he recks now. He has parted with all the cares of life, and has at last found rest. Forrest's greatest Shakespearean parts were Lear, Othello, and Coriolanus. The first grew mellow and rich as the actor grew in years, while it still retained much of its earlier force. His Othello suffered with the decline of his faculties, although his clear conception of all he did was apparent to the end in the acting of every one of his parts. Coriolanus died with him, the last of all the Romans. He was greatest, however, in such parts as Virginius, William Tell, and Sparta- cus. Here his mannerisms of gait and utterance were less noticeable than in his Shakespearean characters, or were overlooked in the rugged massiveness of the creation. Hamlet, Richard, and Macbeth were out of his temperament, and added nothing to his fame ; but Richelieu is said to have been one of his noblest and most impressive performances. He was in all things marked and distinctive. His obtrusive personality often destroyed the harmony of the portrait he was painting ; but in his inspired moments, which were many, his touches were sub- lime. He passed over quiet scenes with little elaboration, and dwelt strongly upon the grand features of the characters he represented. His Lear, in the great scenes, rose to a majestic height, but fell in places almost to mediocrity. His art was unequal to his natural gifts. He was totally unlike his great contempo- rary and rival, Macready, whose attention to detail gave to every performance the harmony of perfect work. This memoir may fitly close with an illustrative anecdote of the great actor. Toward the end of his professional career he was playing an engagement at St. Louis. He was very feeble in health, and his lameness was a source of great anxiety to him. Sitting at a late supper in his hotel one evening, after a per- formance of " King Lear," with his friend J. B. McCullough, of the Globe-Demo-
