ered him an engagement, which, though allowed to have
been liberal, seems not to have come up to his own estimate of his
deserts. Playing two or three or four characters well is a very
different thing from sustaining a whole line of acting, to which long
practice and great constitutional force are as necessary as any other
requisite. In this view of the matter, as well as because managers
neither desire nor will be permitted in England to supersede established
favourite servants of the public, it will not appear surprising that the
first rate rank of characters to which Mr. Cooper aspired, was refused
to him by the managers, who thought that they better consulted the
public feeling, their own interest, and even the young gentleman's fame
and ultimate prosperity, by placing him in a secondary general line, in
which he might improve himself by playing with and observing the best
models, and in regular gradation make his way to the first, as Kemble,
Cooke, and others had done before him. This however was too unpalatable
for his ambition to swallow. The first he would be, or none. There is
not a sentiment of Julius Caesar's that is thought so censurable and
unworthy of his great mind as that which he uttered when, pointing to a
small town, he said, "I would rather be the first man in that village
than the second in Rome." This has been justly called perverted
ambition, and Milton stamped it with terrible condemnation when he put
into the mouth of his arch fiend the sentiment--"better to reign in hell
than serve in heaven." The passions of youth extenuate those errors
which in ripened manhood are criminal; and it is not improbable that Mr.
Cooper's own opinion at this day concurs with ours when we say that his
refusal of the manager's offer seems to us to have been very
injudicious. From Plautus, with whom we dare say he had long before had
an intimacy, he might have taken this profitable lesson,

Viam qui nescit qua deveniat ad mare
Eum oportet amnem quaerere comitem sibi.

Had he not rejected that offer he would long ere this have had permanent
possession of the rank to which he too prematurely aspired. His refusal
was followed by a retreat into the country, where, with the perseverance
of Demosthenes, he laboured in fitting himself for a more successful
effort; resolved to force his way if possible to the high object of his
ambition.

During his retirement intimations of his success crossed the Atlantic.
Mr. Tyler,