crude. He put the king behind a
table, in the first scene--which had the effect of preparation for a
lecture; and it pleased him to speak the storm speech away back at the
upper entrance, with his body almost wholly concealed behind painted
crags. With all its moments of power and of tenderness the embodiment
was neither royal, lovable, nor great. It might be a good Italian Lear:
it was not the Lear of Shakespeare. Salvini was particularly out of the
character in the curse scene and in the frantic parting from the two
daughters, because there the quality of the man, behind the action,
seemed especially common. The action, though, was theatrical and had its
due effect.

XXIV.

HENRY IRVING AS EUGENE ARAM.

Henry Irving's impersonation of Eugene Aram--given in a vein that is
distinctly unique--was one of strange and melancholy grace and also of
weird poetical and pathetic power.

More than fifty years ago, just after Bulwer's novel on the subject of
Eugene Aram was published, that character first came upon the stage, and
its first introduction to the American theatre occurred at the Bowery,
where it was represented by John R. Scott. Aram languished, however, as
a dramatic person, and soon disappeared. He did not thrive in England,
neither, till, in 1873, Henry Irving, who had achieved great success in
_The Bells_, prompted W.G. Wills to effect his resuscitation in a new
play, and acted him in a new manner. The part then found an actor who
could play it,--investing psychological subtlety with tender human
feeling and romantic grace, and making an imaginary experience of
suffering vital and heartrending in its awful reality. The performance
ranks with the best that Henry Irving has given--with _Mathias_,
_Lesurques_, _Dubosc_, _Louis XI._, and _Hamlet_; those studies of the
night-side of human nature in which his imagination and intellect and
his sombre feeling have been revealed and best exemplified.

Eugene Aram was born at Ramsgill, in Nidderdale, Yorkshire, in 1704. His
father, Peter Aram, was a man of good family but becoming reduced in
circumstances he took service as a gardener on the estate of Sir Edward
Blackett, of Newby Hall. In 1710 Peter Aram and his family were living
at Bondgate, near Ripon, and there Eugene went to school and learned to
read the New Testament. At a considerably later period he was
instructed, during one month, by the Rev. Mr. Alcock, of Burndall. This
was the extent of the tui