It is easy to understand why, in the great variety of Macready's impersonations, none stood out by universal consent as indubitably the greatest. To all he gave his unstinted devotion and the full measure of his powers, and the choice was left to be determined mainly by the peculiar taste of the spectator. Yet there were some which must be recalled with especial vividness as best exemplifying the scope of his genius and his general characteristics. Two of these parts, Werner and Melantius, were not Shakespearian creations, but they were at least devices of the poetical imagination, not of the mere playwright's handiwork. In both we have the spectacle of a proud and sensitive but open and loving nature blighted with dishonor and misery through the crimes of one near in blood and cherished with an unsuspecting affection. Here were conceptions that made no demands on his imaginative power. He had not to transform himself into the characters, but only to give free play to the springs of his own nature. The grief, the passion, the sudden revulsions of feeling were not mimetic displays: one could imagine no different expression of them. He was Werner and Melantius because Werner and Melantius were Macready. Shakespeare's characters do not so adapt themselves to individual idiosyncrasies. No man can hope to identify himself with them unless he can give wings to his faculties and soar above the plane of his actual emotions. Often, no doubt, apparent triumphs have been gained by displays of histrionic power that owed little to the informing spirit of the poet. But Macready has never been accused of seeking such results: whatever his performances may have lacked, they were always imbued with a fine intelligence which brought all the details into harmony and kept the attention fixed on the conception of the character. Thus in Macbeth, which was perhaps, on the whole, his most perfect impersonation, every look and gesture, every intonation, conveyed the idea of one who lived on the border-line of an invisible world, to whom all shapes and actions were half phantasmal, for whom clear vision and sober contemplation were impossible. All his utterances were abrupt, all his movements hurried; a certain wildness, not of mere mental agitation, but of a spirit nurtured on unrealities, marked his manner and countenance throughout. In Hamlet there was the drawback of a physical appearance unsuited to the part. Yet it was the character which he had studied most profoundly, and in which, as we remember him in it, he held the most complete sway over the minds and feelings of his audiences. None of his performances, as may be imagined, was so distinguished by its intellectuality, yet none was so simply and irresistibly pathetic. The abstraction and self-communing in the delivery of the famous soliloquy can never have been surpassed, and were probably never equaled; and throughout the closet scene there was a reality in the tenderness, the vehemence, and the awe which