It is quite as certain, that he is more thought of _out of it_. The reason is, that she is not ‘food for the critics,’ whereas Mr. Kean notoriously is; there is no end of the topics he affords for discussion—for praise and blame. All that we have said of acting in general applies to his Richard II. It has been supposed that this is his finest part: this is, however, a total misrepresentation. There are only one or two electrical shocks given in it; and in many of his characters he gives a much greater number.—The excellence of his acting is in proportion to the number of hits, for he has not equal truth or purity of style. Richard II. was hardly given correctly as to the general outline. Mr. Kean made it a character of _passion_, that is, of feeling combined with energy; whereas it is a character of _pathos_, that is to say, of feeling combined with weakness. This, we conceive, is the general fault of Mr. Kean’s acting, that it is always energetic or nothing. He is always on full stretch—never relaxed. He expresses all the violence, the extravagance, and fierceness of the passions, but not their misgivings, their helplessness, and sinkings into despair. He has too much of that strong nerve and fibre that is always equally elastic. We might instance to the present purpose, his dashing the glass down with all his might, in the scene with Hereford, instead of letting it fall out of his hands, as from an infant’s; also, his manner of expostulating with Bolingbroke, ‘Why on thy knee, thus low, &c.’ which was altogether fierce and heroic, instead of being sad, thoughtful, and melancholy. If Mr. Kean would look into some passages in this play, into that in particular, ‘Oh that I were a mockery king of snow, to melt away before the sun of Bolingbroke,’ he would find a clue to this character, and to human nature in general, which he seems to have missed—how far feeling is connected with the sense of weakness as well as of strength, or the power of imbecility, and the force of passiveness.