Talma said, “In whatever sphere fate may have placed a man, the grand movements of the soul lift him into an ideal nature.” The greatness of every truly great actor shows itself in the general ideal which characterizes his embodiments. If he has any originality it will publish itself in his ideal. Now, while most actors are not only second-rate but also second-hand, Forrest certainly was original alike as man and as player. He was distinctively original in his personality, original and independent in the very make of his mind and heart. This subtle and striking originality of personal mind and genius was thoroughly leavened and animated by a distinctively American spirit, the spirit generated by the historic and material conditions of American society and the social and moral conditions of American life. He was original by inherited idiosyncrasy, original by his natural education, original by his self- moulding culture which resented and shed every authoritative interference with his freedom and every merely traditional dictation. He was original in going directly to the instructions of nature and in drawing directly from the revelations of his own soul. He was original in a homely intensity of feeling and in a broad and unsophisticated intelligence whose honest edges were never blunted by hypocritical conformity and falsehood. And above all, as an actor he exhibited his originality in a bearing or style of manners thoroughly democratic in its prevailing scornful repudiation of tricks or squeamish nicety, and a frank reliance on the simplicity of truth and nature in their naked power.