But he was small, puny and weak, and probably his frame would hardly have carried him through one of the grand heroic parts. Where he was at his best and greatest was in such tender, appealing plays as _The Porter’s Knot_. Here was the real spirit of tragedy, and here he differed from the schoolmen of whom I have spoken, just as the pathos of a story of misery and woe, told simply and plainly from heart to heart by the sufferer himself, differs from the artificial emotion cooked up for a jury by a lawyer. He could draw tears from the stoniest. Unhappily the feeble body was soon worn out; his arduous work exhausted him; stimulants kept him up to the mark for a time, but they, too, exacted their penalty. His London successes lasted but some eight years, for he retired from the stage in 1862, and two years later he died, being not much more than forty years old. When Dion Boucicault brought out _The Colleen Bawn_ with his beautiful wife as the Colleen, his Miles na Coppaleen fairly took the town by storm. The devil-may-care Irish joyousness which he threw into the part was irresistible, and carried actors and audience with it from his first entrance to the end. But there was one part of his which was even more striking. When he played _The Vampire_, the performance was so horrifying, so ghastly in its realism, that, if I remember right, it was soon withdrawn on that account. The public could not stand it, and it was not brought out again. It was a haunting performance. First nights in the Victorian days were not the fashionable gatherings that they now are. People took no more notice of them than they did of ordinary performances. That accounted for my being present, quite by accident, at the first night of _The Bells_ on the 25th of November, 1871. The sensation which Irving created in it was sudden and startling. It was a magnificent success, and Irving’s fame was made. But what I thought even better was his performance of Jingle in _Pickwick_, by which the famous play was preceded. He was Jingle to the life. The impudent, lean, hungry, out-at-elbows stroller and swindler was a very picture of bohemian destitution. Irving’s many successes, his shortcomings and his mannerisms are of too recent date to need dwelling upon. Whether he was a great tragedian or not has been much debated; but I never heard two opinions as to his powers in comedy; his Jingle, his Jeremy Diddler and his Doricourt in _The Belle’s Stratagem_ were probably as perfect comedy as could be seen. Personally he was one of the most charming of men, and he made many fast friends.