‘Robert Macaire,’ that strange, almost weird-like drama, was familiar enough to Irving, who had occasionally played it in the early part of his course, and also at the St. James’s Theatre in 1867. For all performers of genius who have taste for the mere _diablerie_ of acting, and the eccentric mixture of tragic and comic, this character offers an attraction, if not a fascination. We can feel its power ourselves as we call up the grotesque figure; nay, even those who have never seen the piece can have an understanding of the character, as a coherent piece of grotesque. There is something of genius in the contrasted and yet intimate union between the eccentric pair. In June, 1883, there had been a performance at the Lyceum for the Royal College of Music, when Irving had played the character, assisted by “friend Toole,” Bancroft, Terriss, and Miss Terry—certainly a strong cast. Toole, on this occasion, was almost too irrepressible, and rather distorted the proportion of the two characters, encroaching on the delicate details in the part of his friend, and overflowing with the pantomimic humours, or “gags,” which are the traditions of Jacques Strop. When the piece was formally brought out, the part was allotted to Mr. Weedon Grossmith, who was in the other extreme, and too subordinate. The play was produced in July, 1888, and was found not so attractive as was anticipated. It seemed as though it were not wholly intelligible to the audience. There were some reasons for this, the chief being the gruesome assassination at “the roadside inn,” which is old-fashioned, being literally “played out.” More curious was it to find that the quaint type of Macaire seemed to convey nothing very distinct. All accepted it as an incoherent extravagance: which opens an interesting speculation—viz., How many such parts are there which have been the characters of the original actors, and not the author’s—the former’s creation, in short? Lemaître’s extraordinary success was, as is well known, the result of a happy inspiration conceived during the progress of the piece. From being a serious or tragic character, he turned it into a grotesque one. There may have been here something founded on the sort of _gaminerie_ that seems to go with crime; or it may have been recklessness, which, together with a ludicrous attempt at a squalid dandyism, showed a mind not only depraved, but dulled and _embêté_. This sort of inspiration, where an actor sees his own conception in the part and makes it his own, is illustrated by ‘The Bells,’ which—in the hands of another actor—might have been played according to conventional laws. An English actor who would have succeeded in the part was the elder Robson. In Irving’s case, the audience were not in key, or in tune; the thing seemed _passé_, though our actor had all the traditions of the part, even to the curiously “creaking snuff-box.”[42]