Some one had made a degrading allusion to Forrest, when Murdock replied, “Never had I been able to find a fitting illustration of the massive and powerful acting of Forrest until, on a visit to Rome some years ago, I stood before the mighty works of Michael Angelo,—his Last Judgment, his gigantic Moses. Call it exaggerated if you will. But there it is, beautiful in symmetry, impressive in proportions, sublime in majesty. Such was Edwin Forrest when representing the chosen characters of Shakspeare.” The illustration was as exact as the spirit that prompted it was generous. It indicates precisely the central attribute of the subject. For the powerful and reposeful port, the elemental poise and swing of the colossal figures of Angelo, reveal just what the histrionic pose and bearing of Forrest revealed, namely, the preponderance in him of the universal over the individual, the working of the forces of nature rather than the straining of his will. This is what makes a personality memorable, for it is contagious on others, and so invisibly descends the ages. CHAPTER XV. PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC LIFE.—FONTHILL CASTLE.—JEALOUSY.—DIVORCE.— LAWSUITS.—TRAGEDIES OF LOVE IN HUMAN LIFE AND IN THE DRAMATIC ART. Forrest was now in his forty-fourth year, as magnificent a specimen of manhood perhaps as there was on the continent. His strength, vitality, fulness of functional power, and confronting fearlessness of soul before the course of nature and the faces of men, were so complete as to give him a chronic sense of complacency and luxury in the mere feeling of existence endowed with so much ability to do whatever he wished to do.