The above estimate of British dramatic criticism is a little rose-colored, from the imperfect experience of the writer at the time. It was not long before he knew more of it in its less attractive aspect. For he found that the same unhappy influences of personal prejudice and spite, of ignorance and spleen, of cabal interest and corruption, which betrayed themselves in the American press, were conspicuously shown also in the English. Only a few months before the arrival of Forrest, a company of French players from Paris had attempted to perform in London, and had been subjected to treatment, through the instigation of the rival theatres, which had caused their failure and deeply disgraced and mortified the public. The intense self-interest and notorious jealousy of prominent players, as a class, produced in London, as elsewhere, cliques who set up as champions each of its favorite performer, and strove to advance him, not only by rightful means, but likewise by the illegitimate method of putting his competitors down. The chosen literary tool of a great tragedian, the newspaper critic who arrogates to represent his interests, very often volunteers services with which his principal has nothing to do. It was so in London while Forrest played in Drury Lane. Macready, Vandenhoff, Charles Kemble, Charles Kean, and Booth all had rival engagements. Three different newspapers were the respective organs of three of these actors. All three agreed in depreciating and abusing the stranger, while each one at the same time spoke with detraction and sneers of the favorites of the other two. While the general press spoke fairly of each performer, and gave Forrest such notices as more than satisfied him and his friends, these special papers indulged in fulsome eulogy of their chosen idol and assailed the others with satire and insult. For example, one writer says of Kean, "He stars in country theatres, where his power of exaggerating the faults of his father's acting gives delight to the unwashed of the gallery, who like handsome dresses, noise, stamping, bustle, and splutter." A second says of Booth, "Bunn, in his drowning desperation, catches at straws. He has put forward Booth, the shadow and foil of Kean in bygone days. His Richard seems to have been a wretched failure." A third says of Macready in Othello, in the scene with Iago and Brabantio, "He comes on the stage with the air of a sentimental negro rehearsing the part of Hamlet." And a fourth characterizes the voice of Macready "as a combination of grunt, guttural, and spasm." After such specimens of "criticism" on their own countrymen, one need not feel surprised to read notices of a foreigner, inspired by the same spirit, like the following from the "Examiner": "Mr. Forrest has appeared in Mr. Howard Payne's foolish compilation called Brutus. This is an American tragedy, and not ill-suited, on the whole, to Mr. Forrest's style. The result was amazingly disagreeable."