ment,
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 15th] 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 out-door 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 L40. 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 old fellow managed his angle, throwing the
fly with unerring certainty at a great distance and among
overhanging bushes, and waving it gracefully in the air, to keep it
from entangling, as he stumped with his staff and wooden leg from
one bend of the river to another. He kept up a continual flow of
cheerful and entertaining t