out puns and conundrums; yet did he contrive to infuse into all this
mummery and buffoonery, into this salmagundi of the incongruous and the
_outre_, an unmistakably tragic element,--an element of depth and
strength and passion, and almost of sublimity. The mountebank became
inspired. The Jack Pudding suddenly drew the _cothurnus_ over his clogs.
You were awe-stricken by the intensity, the vehemence, he threw into the
mean balderdash of the burlesque-monger. These qualities were even more
apparent in his subsequent personation of _Medea_, in Robert Brough's
parody of the Franco-Italian tragedy. The love, the hate, the scorn, of
the abandoned wife of _Jason_, the diabolic loathing in which she holds
_Creuesa_, the tigerish affection with which she regards the children
whom she is afterwards to slay,--all these were portrayed by Robson,
through the medium, be it always remembered, of doggerel and slang, with
astonishing force and vigor. The original _Medea_, the great Ristori
herself, came to see Robson, and was delighted with and amazed at him.
She scarcely understood two words of English, but the actor's genius
struck her home through the bull's-hide target of an unknown tongue.
_"Uomo straordinario!"_ she went away saying.

I have anticipated the order of his successes, but at this distance of
time and places I can keep no chronological count of them. Robson has
always alternated the serio-comic burlesque with pure farce, and after
_Jem Baggs_ his brightest hits have been in the deaf ostler in "Boots at
the Swan" and the discharged criminal in "Retained for the Defence." In
the burlesque of "Masaniello," he had an opportunity--which some thought
would prove a magnificent one to him--of showing the grotesque side of
insanity; but, for some reason or other, the part seemed distasteful to
him. It may have been repugnant to his eminently sensitive spirit to
exhibit the ludicrous aspect of the most dreadful of human infirmities.
_A peste, fame, bello, et dementia libera nos, Domine!_ Perhaps the
piece itself was weak. At all events, "Masaniello" had but a brief run.
A drunken man, a jealous man, a deaf man, a fool, a vagabond, a demon, a
tyrant, Robson could marvellously depict: in the crazy Neapolitan
fisherman he either failed or was unwilling to excel. I had been for a
long period extremely solicitous to see Robson undertake the part of
_Sir Giles Overreach_ in "A New Way to pay Old Debts." You know that
_Sir Giles_, aft