Dowton undervalued Edmund Kean, whose merit he never could be induced to acknowledge. When the vase was presented to that great actor, he refused to subscribe, saying, "You may cup Mr. Kean, if you please, but you sha'n't bleed me." He said, too, the cup should be given to Joe Munden for his performance of Marall. Amongst other eccentricities, Dowton fancied (a delusion common to comedians) that he could play tragedy, and never rested until he obtained an opportunity of showing the town that Edmund Kean knew nothing of Shylock. But the experiment was, as might have been expected, a total failure. The great point of novelty consisted in having a number of Jews in court, to represent his friends and partisans, during the trial scene; and in their arms he fainted, when told he was, per force, to become a Christian. The audience laughed outright, as a commentary on the actor's conception. Once he exhibited, privately, to Mr. J. W. Cole, the last scene of Sir Giles Overreach, according to his idea of the author's meaning, and a very mirthful tragedy it proved. He had a strange inverted idea that Massinger intended Sir Giles for a comic character. He also fancied that he could play Lord Ogleby, when nature, with her own hand, had daguerreotyped him for Mr. Sterling. Such are the vagaries of genius, which are equally mournful and unaccountable. [Illustration: Liston as "Paul Pry."] Liston in Tragedy. Play-goers of the present century narrate the early seriousness of Liston, the comedian, and his subsequent turn for tragedy; which may have suggested the apocryphal biography of the actor stated to be by Charles Lamb,[41] whence the following is abridged:-- Liston was lineally descended from Johan de L'Estonne, who came over with the Norman William, and had lands awarded him at Lupton Magna, in Kent. The more immediate ancestors of Mr. Liston were Puritans, and his father, Habakkuk, was an Anabaptist minister. At the age of nine, young Liston was placed under the tuition of the Rev. Mr. Goodenough, whose decease was attended with these awful circumstances. It seems that the old gentleman and his pupil had been walking out together, in a fine sunset, to the distance of three-quarters of a mile west of Lupton, when a sudden curiosity took Mr. Goodenough to look down upon a chasm, where a mining shaft had been lately sunk, but soon after abandoned. The old clergyman, leaning over, either with incaution or sudden giddiness (probably a mixture of both), instantly lost his footing, and, to use Mr. Liston's phrase, disappeared, and was doubtless broken into a thousand pieces. The sound of his head &c., dashing successively upon the projecting masses of the chasm had such an effect upon the youth Liston, that a serious sickness ensued, and even for many years after his recovery, he was not once seen so much as to smile. [41] This paper appeared in the "London Magazine," January, 1825, _not_ 1824, as stated at page 121.