These plays I read invariably through once before repeating any of
them; partly to make such of them as are seldom or never acted,
familiar to the public, by delivering them alternately with those
better known; and partly to avoid, what I much dreaded, becoming
mechanical or hackneyed myself in their delivery by perpetual
repetition of the same pieces, and so losing any portion of the
inspiration of my text by constant iteration of those garbled
versions of it, from which so much of its nobler and finer elements
are of hard necessity omitted in such a process as my reading of
them. I persisted in this system for my own "soul's sake," and not
to debase my work more than was inevitable, to the very considerable
detriment of my gains.

The public _always_ came in goodly numbers to hear "Macbeth,"
"Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," and "The Merchant of Venice;" and
Mendelssohn's exquisite music, made an accompaniment to the reading
of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," rendered that a peculiarly popular
performance. But to _all_ the other plays the audiences were
considerably less numerous, and to some few of them I often had but
few listeners. Mr. Mitchell, who for a considerable length of time
_farmed_ my readings, protested bitterly against this system, which
involved, of course, less profits than he might have made by
repeating only the most popular plays; and my own agents, when I was
reading on my own account, did not fail to represent to me that I
was what they called sacrificing my interests, _i.e._ my receipts,
to this plan of operations; but man does not live by bread alone,
and for more than twenty years that I followed the trade of a
wandering rhapsodist, I never consciously sacrificed my sense of
what was due to my work, for the sake of what I could make by it. I
have wished, and hoped, and prayed, that I might be able to use my
small gift _dutifully_; and to my own profound feeling of the
_virtue_ of these noble works, have owed whatever power I found to
interpret them. My great reward has been, passing a large portion of
my life in familiar intercourse with that greatest and best English
mind and heart, and living almost daily in that world above the
world, into which he lifted me. One inspiration alone could have
been purer or higher; and to that, my earthly master's work, done as