Another anecdote, at that time related to me by Irving himself, also belongs to those old days of the Albion. Seated one evening at supper after the play he found himself opposite to a little old gentleman, who was unable to conceal his remembered enjoyment of the performance he had just witnessed at the theatre. Irving, encouraged by his manifest geniality, inquired where he had been, to which the stranger replied that he had come from the Vaudeville, where he had seen the most delightful play, _The Two Roses_, wherein, of course, at the time Irving was acting. Nothing could exceed the old gentleman’s enthusiasm for the performers, as he recalled them one after another. Montague was superb! Thorne was excellent! and so on and so on in a liberal catalogue of the several performers, his appreciation rising with each added name. Irving, at last a little nettled, as he confessed to me, at the exclusion of all reference to himself, ventured to inquire of his neighbour whether there was not in the play a character called Digby Grant. “Ah yes! Ah yes!” assented the old gentleman, reflectively. “Well, now,” said Irving, “what did you think of that performance?” “Very good,” returned the old gentleman--“very good,” in tones which seemed to imply that he was only half-willingly conceding a point upon which he was not wholly convinced. “Ah yes, yes,” he added; “very good, but, by heavens,” he continued, “what a part Johnny Hare would have made of it!” The progress made by Irving in those earlier times of his histrionic career was fiercely disputed at each step of the way. It could hardly have been foreseen then that he would ultimately win the larger fame that was accorded to him, and it must be conceded to those critics who blocked his path that there was much in the individuality of the man himself to account for the slow growth of his appeal to the public. I have often heard him say himself in later days that his success was achieved in spite of many natural disabilities. His figure at that time was accounted ungainly, his gestures were often reckoned grotesque, and the quality of his voice was such as naturally to repel those whom his individuality did not powerfully attract. But it was in virtue of that individuality, and by reason of those very attributes that barred his progress on the threshold of his career, that he at last reached the goal. The peculiarities of his personality could not by their nature, on their first appeal, be widely accepted as forming a normal vehicle for the expression of poetic drama. For many years his career presented [Illustration: HENRY IRVING IN THE CHARACTER OF BECKET From a photograph by H. H. CAMERON. _To face page 237._ ]