With respect to the characters enacted by the greatest actor of the present century, Macready’s testimony of Kean is that in none of Kean’s personations did he display more masterly elocution than in the third act of ‘Richard III.’ In Sir Edward Mortimer, Kean was unapproachable, and Master Betty (whom Macready praises highly) next to him, though far off. In Sir Edward, Kean ‘subjected his style to the restraint of the severest taste. Throughout the play the actor held absolute sway over his hearers; and there is no survivor of those hearers who will not enjoy a description which enables them to live over again moments of a bygone delight which the present stage cannot afford. There are, perhaps, not so few who remember Kean’s Sir Edward Mortimer as of those who remember his ‘Oroonoko.’ Those who do will endorse all that Macready says of that masterly representation of the African Prince in slavery, where Kean, with a calm submission to his fate, still preserved all his princely demeanour. There was one passage which was ‘never to be forgotten’--the prayer for his Imoinda. After replying to Blandford, ‘No, there is nothing to be done for me,’ he remained, says Macready, ‘for a few moments in apparent abstraction; then, with a concentration of feeling that gave emphasis to every word, clasping his hands together, in tones most tender, distinct, and melodious, he poured out, as if from the very depths of his heart, his earnest supplication:-- Thou God ador’d, thou ever-glorious Sun! If she be yet on earth, send me a beam Of thy all-seeing power to light me to her! Or if thy sister-goddess has preferr’d Her beauty to the skies, to be a star, Oh, tell me where she shines, that I may stand Whole nights, and gaze upon her!’ We may refer to another passage, in ‘Othello,’ in which the tenderness, distinctness, and mournful melodiousness of Edmund Kean’s voice used to affect the whole house to hushed and rapt admiration; namely, the passage beginning with, ‘Farewell, the plumed troop!’ and ending with, ‘Othello’s occupation’s gone!’ It was like some magic instrument, which laid all hearts submissive to its irresistible enchantment.