In earlier days, Kemble was accustomed to be with the first of gentlemen. One of the finest of the few left makes some record of him. Walpole notices Kemble twice; and we find that he held him superior to Garrick in Benedick, and to Quin in Maskwell. In September 1789, Walpole writes from Strawberry Hill to the Miss Berrys: "Kemble, and Lysons the clergyman, passed all Wednesday here, with me. The former is melting the three parts of 'Henry VI.' into one piece. I doubt it will be difficult to make a tolerable play out of them." The only other notice is dated April 1791; when the writer says to Miss Berry: "_Apropos_ to Catherine and Petruchio, I supped with their representatives, Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, t'other night, at Miss Farren's ...," at the bow-window house in Green Street, Grosvenor Square. "Mrs. Siddons is leaner, but looks well. She has played Jane Shore and Desdemona, and is to play in the 'Gamester,' all the parts she will act this year. Kemble, they say, shone in Othello." Othello was one of Kemble's effective, yet not his most successful character; but his figure was well formed for it. He bore drapery with infinite grace, and expressed every feeling well, by voice, feature, and glance of the eye--though in the first, as with his brother Charles, lay his chief defect. It wanted strength. We are accustomed, perhaps, to associate him most with Hamlet, and old playgoers have told me of a grand delivery of the soliloquies; a mingled romance and philosophy in the whole character; an eloquent bye-play, a sweet reverence for his father, a remembrance of the _prince_, with whatever companion he might be for the moment, of a beautiful filial affection for his mother, and of one more tender which he could _not_ conceal for Ophelia. When Kemble first appeared in Hamlet, the town could not say that Henderson was excelled, but many confessed that he was equalled. That confession stirred no ill-blood between them. "I never had an opportunity," said Kemble, later, "to study any actor better than myself, except Mr. Henderson." Of the grandeur and sublimity of the passion-tossed Orestes he gave so complete a picture that it was said--by that single character alone he might have reaped immortal fame. On the other hand, his Biron was only a respectable performance; his Macbeth on a level with his Othello; his Richard and Sir Giles very inferior to Cooke's, still more so to those of Edmund Kean; and in comedy, generally, he was a very poor actor indeed, except in parts where he had to exercise dignity, express pathos, or pronounce a sentiment of moral tendency. "Whene'er he tries the airy or the gay, Judgment, not genius, marks the cold essay." The judgment was not always sensibly exercised, for Kemble was undoubtedly "For meaning too precise inclined to pore, And labour for a point unknown before."