Edmund Kean.
By H. T. Tuckerman.
The finest moral trait in Kean was a certain spirit, tenacity of purpose, and lofty confidence in himself, which differed widely from presumption or conceit: a kind of instinctive faith, that no force of circumstances or prescription ever quenched. This quality, more easily felt than described, seems the prerogative of genius in all departments of life, and is often the only explicable inspiration that sustains it amid discomfiture and privation. It runs, like a thread of gold, through the dark and tangled web of Kean's career—lends something of dignity to the most abject moment of his life, and redeems from absolute degradation his moments of most entire self-abandonment. Thus, when an obscure and provincial actor, performing Alexander the Great, he replied indignantly to the sarcasm of an auditor in the stage-box, who called him Alexander the Little: "Yes, Sir, with a great soul!" and exultingly told his wife, after his first great success in London, in reply to her anxious inquiry what Lord Essex thought of him: "D———n Lord Essex, the pit rose to me;" he felt that the appeal of genius was universal, and that which stirred in his blood demanded the response of humanity. This consciousness of natural gifts made him spurn the least encroachment upon his self-respect, however poverty weighed him down, and long before fame justified to the world his claims. He rushed for ever away from the house of his earliest protector, because of a careless remark of one of the company that disavowed his equality with the children of the family. Whenever an inferior part was allotted him, he fled to avoid the compromise of his feelings; and after his triumph
