When, early in 1870, Fechter left England for America, Charles Dickens contributed to the _Atlantic Monthly_ an article in his praise. "I cannot," said the great novelist, "wish my friend a better audience than he will find in the American people, and I cannot wish them a better actor than they will find in my friend." Charles Dickens, it will be remembered, was one of the keenest of all dramatic critics. His admiration for Fechter's much discussed rendering of Hamlet is expressed in the following words:-- "Perhaps no innovation in art was ever accepted with so much favour by so many intelligent persons, pre-committed to, and pre-occupied by, another system, as Fechter's Hamlet. I take this to have been the case (as it unquestionably was in London), not because of its picturesqueness, not because of its novelty, not because of its many scattered beauties, but because of its perfect consistency with itself. Its great and satisfying originality was in its possessing the merit of a distinctly conceived and executed idea. Fechter's Hamlet, a pale woe-begone Norseman, with long flaxen hair, wearing a strange garb, never associated with the part upon the English stage (if ever seen there at all), and making a piratical sweep upon the whole fleet of little theatrical prescriptions without meaning, or like Dr. Johnson's celebrated friend, with only one idea in them, and that a wrong one, never could have achieved its extraordinary success but for its animation by one pervading purpose, to which all changes were made intelligently "sub-servient." And yet of Fechter's Hamlet in America, William Winter, that greatest and most deservedly honoured of transatlantic critics and authorities on things theatrical, has said:-- "About 1861 Charles Fechter appeared upon the English stage and gave an extraordinary performance of Hamlet. It subsequently (1869-70) reached America. It was 'the rage' on both sides of the sea. In a technical sense it was a performance of ability, but it was chiefly remarkable for light hair and bad English. Fanny Kemble tells a story of a lady who, at a dinner in London, was asked by a neighbouring guest whether she had seen Mr. Fechter as Hamlet. 'No,' she said, 'I have not; and I think I should not care to hear the English blank verse spoken by a foreigner.' The inquirer gazed meditatively upon his plate for some time, and then said, 'But, Hamlet _was_ a foreigner, wasn't he?'