Besides, he was a man of extraordinary strength and originality of character, an imperious, self-defending personality, living steadfastly at first hand from his own impulses, perceptions, and purposes, not shiftily in faded reflections of the opinions and wishes of other people at the second or third remove. He was a standing refutation of the common prejudice against actors, that simulating so many fictitious traits they gradually cease to have genuine ones of their own, and become mere lay figures ready for every chance dress. If any man ever was true to his own fixed type, Forrest was. The study of such a character is always attractive and strengthening, a valuable tonic for more dependent and aimless natures. He lived a varied, wide, and profound life. He travelled extensively, mingled with all sorts of people, the noble and the base, the high and the low, observed keenly, reflected much, was exposed to almost every sort of trial, and assimilated into his experience the principal secrets of human nature. The moral substance of the world passed into his soul, and the great lessons of human destiny were epitomized there. He knew the inebriating sweetness of popular applause, and the bitter revulsions consequent on its change into public disfavor and censure. He wore the honors, suffered the penalties, and proved both the solidity and the hollowness of fame on its various levels, from the wild idolatry of ignorant throngs to the admiring friendship of gifted and refined spirits. There are swarms of men of dry and contracted souls, and of a poor, wearisome monotony of conventional habits, with no spiritual saliency or relish, no free appropriation of the treasures of the world, whose lives if written would have about as much dignity and interest as the life of a dorbug or a bat. But when a man's faculties are expansive, and have embraced, in a fresh, impulsive way, a great range of experiences, the story is worth telling, and, if truly told, will not fail to yield matter for profitable meditation. In addition, Forrest always showed himself a man of sterling integrity, inflexible truth, whose word was as good as his bond, who toiled in the open ways of self-denial and industry to build his name and position. He bribed no one to write him up, bought no one from writing him down, stooped to no startling eccentricities or tricks to get himself talked about, arranged no conspiracies to push his own claims or hold others back, but by manly resolution, study, and effort paid the fair price for all he won, triumphantly resisting those insidious lures of indolence, dissipation, and improvidence so incident to a theatrical career, and steadily raising himself to the summit of his difficult profession, where he sat in assured mastery for two generations. There was a native grandeur about him which attracted admiring attention wherever he moved.