During this year, that is, before he was fifteen years old, he made another appearance on the stage, under circumstances which show the native boldness and resolution of his character. Without advice or assistance of any kind, he went alone to the proprietors of the Prune Street Theatre and asked them to let it to him on his own account for a single night. The proposition surprised them, but they admired the pluck of the boy so much that they granted his request. He engaged the company to support him, got his brother William to print the bills announcing him in the character of Richard the Third, drew a good house, and came off with a liberal quantity of applause and a small pecuniary gain. It was at this date, when Forrest was in his fifteenth year, that he, who was destined to inspire so many poems, drew from the prophetic muse of an admirer the first verses ever composed on him. They were written by the Hon. Joseph R. Chandler, one of the most distinguished citizens of Philadelphia, and then editor of the "United States Gazette." "Turn we from State to view the mimic Stage, Which gives the form and pressure of the age. Each season brings its wonders, and each year Some unfledged buskins on our boards appear; And Covent Garden sends us stage-sick trash To gather laurels or to pocket cash. A Phillipps comes to sing us Braham's airs, And Wallack, Finn, and Maywood strut with theirs. These sickly meteors dim our hemisphere, While rare as comets Cookes and Keans appear: These fopling twinklers, with their borrowed glare, Will meet our censure when we cease to stare. But the bright sun that gives our stage its rays Still lights and warms us by its innate blaze. We have a power to gild our drama's age,-- COOPER'S our Sun, his orbit is our stage. Long may he shine, by sense and taste approved, By fancy reverenced, and by genius loved! And when retiring, mourned by every grace, May FORREST rise to fill his envied place! Dear child of genius! round thy youthful brow Taste, wit, and beauty bind thy laurel now. No foreign praise thy native worth need claim; No aid extrinsic heralds forth thy name; No titled patron's power thy merit decked:-- The blood of Douglas will itself protect!" The insight and the foresight indicated in the application of the last line to the yet undeveloped boy are remarkable, and will thrill every one who is familiar with the bearing and poise of the mature actor and man. For in him the massive majesty of pose, the slow weight of gesture, the fixedness of look, the ponderous gutturality and sweetness of articulative energy, all revealed an intensity and equilibrium of selfhood, a deep and vast power of personality, not often equalled. He was nothing if not independent and competent to his own protection.