All who knew Forrest with any intimacy were well aware of his enthusiastic appreciation of the genius and affection for the memory of Kean. He never tired of expatiating on this subject. And he always felt a sharp pleasure in the recollection that when his friend Hackett, the incomparable American Falstaff, called on Kean in London, only a few days before his death, the first words of the dying tragedian were a kind inquiry after the welfare of Edwin Forrest. In his library one day, showing a friend a superb steel engraving of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of John Philip Kemble, he said earnestly and with a regretful tone, “I would give a thousand dollars in gold for a likeness of Kean as good as this is of Kemble.” He was familiar with the principal histories of the stage and biographies of players, and felt the keenest interest in their characters, their styles of acting, their personal fortunes. He also felt a pride in the fame and triumphs of his best contemporaries. He was always on kind terms with the elder Booth, to whom he assigned dramatic powers of a very extraordinary degree, although he believed that considerable of their effectiveness was caught from the contagious and electrifying example of Edmund Kean. In the last year of his life, when he was badly broken down in health and fortune, Booth said to Forrest one day, “I want to play the Devil.” “It seems to me,” said Forrest, “that you have done that pretty well all your life.” “Oh, I don’t mean that,” replied Booth; “I am referring to the drama of Lord Byron. I want to play Lucifer to your Cain. Would not that draw,—you cast in the character of Cain, I in that of Lucifer?” “I think it would,” remarked Forrest. “We _must_ do it before we die,” replied Booth,—and went away, soon to pass into the impenetrable shadow, leaving this too with many another broken and unfulfilled dream. Forrest assigned an exalted artistic rank to the very varied dramatic impersonations of Mr. E. L. Davenport, every one of whose rôles is marked by firm drawing, distinct light and shade, fine consistency and finish. His Sir Giles Overreach was hardly surpassed by Kean or Booth, and has not been approached by anybody else. His quick, alert, springy tread full of fire and rapidity, the whole man in every step, fixed the attention and made every one feel that there was a terrific concentration of energy, an insane possession of the nerve-centres, portending something frightful soon to come. An old play-goer on witnessing this impersonation wrote the following impromptu: “While viewing each remembered scene, before my gaze appears Each famed depictor of Sir Giles for almost fifty years; The elder Kean and mighty Booth have held all hearts in thrall, But, without overreaching truth, you overreach them all!”