y false pretences, but throughout
solid, sterling, natural, admirable. I came at last, however, to the
conviction, that, marked as was the distinction gained by this good
actor in parts such as these, and as the lighthouse-keeper--the
character originally sustained in private by Charles Dickens--in Wilkie
Collins's play, domestic drama was not his _forte_; or, rather, that it
was not his _fortissimo_. In fantastic burlesque, in the comic-terrible,
he was unrivalled and inimitable. In the domestic drama he could hardly
be surpassed, but he might be approached. Webster, Emery, Addison, could
play _Daddy Hardacre_, or the father in "The Porter's Knot"; but none
but himself could at once awe and convulse in _Medea_ and _the Yellow
Dwarf_. These domestic dramas interested, however, as much by their
subject as by the excellence of his acting. Moreover, the public are apt
sometimes to grow weary of burlesques,--their eternal grimacing and
word-torturing and negro-singing and dancing. Themes for parody become
exhausted, and, without long surcease, would not bear repetition. You
may grow puns, like tobacco, until the soil is utterly worn out. The
burlesque-writers, too, exhibited signs of weariness and feebleness.
Planche retired into the Heralds' College. The cleverest of the Broughs
died. His surviving brother was stupid. Talfourd went to the law before
he found an early grave. Hale went to India. The younger generation were
scarcely fit to write pantomimes, and it was not always Christmas.
Besides, Robson had become a manager, and thought, perhaps, that
weightier parts became him. In copartnership with Mr. Emden, he had
succeeded Alfred Wigan as lessee of the Olympic, and there I hope he has
realized a fortune. But whenever his brief vacations occurred, and
actor-like he proceeded to turn them into gold by devoting to
performances in country-theatres those days and nights which should
properly have been given to rest and peace, he proved faithful to his
old loves, and _Jem Baggs_ and _Boots at the Swan_, _Medea_ and _the
Yellow Dwarf_, continued to be his favorite parts.

The popularity attained in England by this most remarkable of modern
actors has never, since the public were first aware of his qualities,
decreased. Robson is always sure to draw. The nights of his playing, or
of his non-playing, at the Olympic, are as sure a gauge of the receipts
as the rising and falling of the mercury in the thermometer are of the
variat