Forrest had seen the rôle of Damon filled by Cooper with transcendent dignity and energy, and the remembrance had been burned into his brain. It was one of the most finished and famous impersonations of that celebrated actor, who charged it with honest passion and clothed it with rugged grandeur. The representation by Cooper, though unequal and careless, was so just in its general outlines to the idea of the author, that when Forrest first hesitatingly essayed the character, he had as a disciple of truth, perforce, largely to repeat the example. But he came to the part with a fresher youth, a more concentrated nature, a keener ambition, and a more elaborate study; and, original in many details as well as in the more conscientious working up of the harmony of the different scenes, it was soon conceded that in the portrayal as a whole and in the unprecedented excitement it produced he had eclipsed his distinguished English forerunner on the American stage. He entered into the spirit and scenery of the subject with so intelligent and vehement an earnestness that he seemed not to act, but to be, Damon, speaking the words spontaneously created in his soul on the spot, not uttering any memorized lesson. It was like a resurrection of Syracuse, with the despot and his tools plotting the overthrow of its republican government, and the faithful friends seeking to prevent the success of the scheme. The spectators forgot that the Sicilian city had vanished ages since, and Dionysius and Pythias and Procles and Calanthe all gone to dust. The reality was before them, and its living shapes moved and spoke to the spell-bound sense.