She scarcely understood two words of English, but the actor's genius struck her home through the bull's-hide target of an unknown tongue. _"Uomo straordinario!"_ she went away saying. I have anticipated the order of his successes, but at this distance of time and places I can keep no chronological count of them. Robson has always alternated the serio-comic burlesque with pure farce, and after _Jem Baggs_ his brightest hits have been in the deaf ostler in "Boots at the Swan" and the discharged criminal in "Retained for the Defence." In the burlesque of "Masaniello," he had an opportunity--which some thought would prove a magnificent one to him--of showing the grotesque side of insanity; but, for some reason or other, the part seemed distasteful to him. It may have been repugnant to his eminently sensitive spirit to exhibit the ludicrous aspect of the most dreadful of human infirmities. _A peste, fame, bello, et dementia libera nos, Domine!_ Perhaps the piece itself was weak. At all events, "Masaniello" had but a brief run. A drunken man, a jealous man, a deaf man, a fool, a vagabond, a demon, a tyrant, Robson could marvellously depict: in the crazy Neapolitan fisherman he either failed or was unwilling to excel. I had been for a long period extremely solicitous to see Robson undertake the part of _Sir Giles Overreach_ in "A New Way to pay Old Debts." You know that _Sir Giles_, after the discovery of the obliterated deed, goes stark staring mad. I should have wished to see him assume Edmund Kean's own character in the real play itself; but Robson was nervous of venturing on a purely "legitimate" _role_. I was half persuaded to write a burlesque on "A New Way to pay Old Debts," and Robson had promised to do his very best with _Sir Giles_; but a feeling, half of laziness, and half of reverence for the fine old drama, came over me, and I never got farther than the first scene.