ting neglect, and such reiterated
disappointments. Who is he that would not, under such circumstances,
sink into languor? It cannot be doubted that dejection every day
detracted from his powers, and that by a kind of irresistible
gravitation, he descended like a falling body in the physical world,
with accelerated velocity, till at last he reached the very bottom of
the profession. Reader, behold--and refrain from regret if you
can--behold COOPER, on whom crowded theatres have since gazed with
astonishment and delight, reduced to the condition of a mere deliverer
of letters and messages upon the stage of a low country theatre. The
writer of this cannot help picturing to himself the feelings of a
multitude of great and worthy personages in Great Britain and India, and
particularly the feelings of a sister, the lovely inheritress of her
family's virtues, if they had known at the time, that which our hero's
manly pride concealed, that the son of doctor Cooper, whose goodness of
heart had often been the refuge of the distressed, was for months
languishing under the chill of public neglect, and dragging on existence
upon a miserable pittance which scarcely afforded him physical support;
or if they had seen him in his unaccommodated removal from that
situation, walking on foot to the metropolis.

The repulses of a mistaken and unworthy few, and the neglect of a world
very little better, had no other effect upon Mr. Cooper's friends Godwin
and Holcroft, than to quicken their sensibility and inflame their ardour
to serve him. It is more than probable those mortifications tended to
increase the conviction of the former that his _eleve_ had made a
deplorable choice of profession, but did not at all shake the opinion
which both, and particularly the latter, entertained that he had great
capabilities for the profession. The youth had now waded in so far, that
to go back might be worse than to go forward; Mr. Holcroft therefore
again took him in hand; read Shakspeare with him, and accompanied their
reading with practical commentaries upon the force of that author's
meaning, marked out to him those parts where the character was to depend
for its interest and impression, on the actor's exertions; heard him
over and over again repeat the most difficult speeches, and instructed
him how to adapt his action, looks, and utterance to the passion which
the author designed to exhibit, so as to excite appropriate feelings in
the auditor. Thoug