We consider it may be pretty safely taken as a general rule that the large popularity of any artist is here synonymous only with great talent. We had also seen quite enough of Mr. Forrest to convince us that he is a man of real talent, with very little, if any, mere trickery in his acting, so that to stigmatize him as a quack or an impostor was as great a violation of truth as of good feeling. At the same time, it is right we should remark that the estimate we had formed of his genius, from his previous representations, was not sufficiently high to induce a belief in all that his eulogists pronounced on his Lear. We, therefore, came to the conclusion that in this case, as in others where opinions are so remote from each other, the truth would, probably, be found midway between the two extremes; and, on seeing and judging for ourselves on Monday night, found our conclusion fully warranted. The general conception of the 'poor old king' is most accurately taken, and his general execution of it fervid, earnest, and harmonious. He has evidently grappled with the character manfully, and he never lets go his hold. The carefulness of his study is sometimes a little too obvious, giving an injurious hardness and over-precision. The awful malediction of Goneril--that fearful curse, which can scarcely be even read without trembling--was delivered by Mr. Forrest with a power and intensity we never saw surpassed by any actor of Lear. It was an exhibition likely to follow a young play-goer to his pillow and mix itself with his dreams. Shakspeare has here given us a wild burst of uncontrolled and uncontrollable rage, mixed with a deep pathos, which connects the very terms of the curse with the cause of the passion,--an awful prayer for a retribution as just as terrible. All this Mr. Forrest evidently understood and felt; and he therefore made his audience feel it with him. The almost supernatural energy with which Lear seems to be carried on to the very termination of the malediction, when the passion exhausts itself and him, was portrayed by Mr. Forrest with fearful reality and effect. He also greatly excelled in the passage,-- 'No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both, That all the world shall--I will do such things,-- What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be The terrors of the earth.' His delivery of these lines was marked with the same truth and power as the curse, and very finely displayed the energy of will and impotence of action which form so touching a combination in Lear's character. But perhaps the very best point in Mr. Forrest's Lear, because the most delicate and difficult passage for an actor to realize, was his manner of giving the lines,-- 'My wits begin to turn.-- Come on, my boy: how dost, my boy? Art cold? I am cold myself.... Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart That's sorry yet for thee.'