st
drawn portraits, one or more limbs or features will be found superior to
the rest, so in this scene of aggregate excellence, there were three
successive speeches of such preeminent excellence and superiority that
they ought to be commemorated. They all turn upon the provoking
insinuation of Clytus:

Philip fought men--but Alexander women.

In the jealousy, the astonishment, the wrath of the insulted hero, the
expression of the actor kept equal flight with the bold wing of the
poet. Accustomed as we have been to the prodigious exertions of the
greatest actors in the world we have not witnessed nor can we conceive
any thing superior to Mr. Cooper in the following speeches----

_Alex._ Envy by the gods!
Is then my glory come to this at last,
To conquer _women_!--Nay, he said the stoutest
Here would tremble at the dangers he had seen!
In all the sickness, all the wounds I bore,
When from my reins the Javelin's head was cut.
Lysimachus! Hephestion! speak Perdicas!
Did I once tremble? Oh, the cursed falsehood!
Did I once shake or groan, or act beneath
The dauntless resolution of a king?

_Lysim._ Wine has transported him.

_Alex._ No, 'tis mere malice.
I was a _woman_ too at Oxydrace,
When planting on the walls a scaling ladder;
I mounted spite of showers of stones, bars, arrows,
And all the lumber which they thunder'd down.
When you beneath cry'd and out spread your arms,
That I should leap among you--did I so?

_Lysim._ Dread sir, the old man knows not what he says.

_Alex._ Was I _woman_ when like Mercury,
I leaped the walls and flew amidst the foe,
And like a baited Lion dyed myself
All over in the blood of those bold hunters;
'Till spent with toil I battled on my knees,
Plucked forth the darts that made my shield a forest,
And hurl'd them back with the most unconquer'd fury,
Then shining in my arms, I sunned the field,
Moved, spoke and fought, and was myself a war.

_Clytus._ 'Twas all Bravado; for, before you leap'd
You saw that I had burst the gates asunder.

Never was a crisis in human passion, more naturally, more appropriately,
more exquisitely marked and illustrated by action than that of Alexander
at this juncture by the action of Mr. Cooper. He leaped like a foaming
tyger from the throne, and, with his arms extended and his fingers
crooked, seemed rushing upon Clytus as