mannerist. This is merely my opinion. He is cried up as a second
Garrick, as a reformer of the stage, etc. It may be so. He may be right,
and all the other actors wrong. This is certain: he is either very good
or very bad. I think decidedly the latter; and I find no medium opinions
concerning him. I am delighted with Young, who acts with great judgment,
discrimination, and feeling. I think him much the best actor at present
on the English stage.... In certain characters, such as may be classed
with Macbeth, I do not think that Cooper has his equal in England. Young
is the only actor I have seen who can compare with him." Later, Irving
somewhat modified his opinion of Kean. He wrote to Brevoort: "Kean is
a strange compound of merits and defects. His excellence consists
in sudden and brilliant touches, in vivid exhibitions of passion and
emotion. I do not think him a discriminating actor, or critical either
at understanding or delineating character; but he produces effects which
no other actor does."

In the summer of 1816, on his way from Liverpool to visit his sister's
family at Birmingham, Irving tarried for a few days at a country place
near Shrewsbury on the border of Wales, and while there encountered
a character whose portrait is cleverly painted. It is interesting to
compare this first sketch with the elaboration of it in the essay on
"The Angler" in the "Sketch-Book."

"In one of our morning strolls [he writes, July 15] along the banks
of the Aleen, a beautiful little pastoral stream that rises among
the Welsh mountains and throws itself into the Dee, we encountered a
veteran angler of old Isaac Walton's school. He was an old
Greenwich outdoor pensioner, had lost one leg in the battle of
Camperdown, had been in America in his youth, and indeed had been
quite a rover, but for many years past had settled himself down in
his native village, not far distant, where he lived very
independently on his pension and some other small annual sums,
amounting in all to about L 40. His great hobby, and indeed the
business of his life, was to angle. I found he had read Isaac
Walton very attentively; he seemed to have imbibed all his
simplicity of heart, contentment of mind, and fluency of tongue.
We kept company with him almost the whole day, wandering along the
beautiful banks of the river, admiring the ease and elegant
dexterity with which the o