Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

All the Year Round: Contributions by Unknown
page 69 of 83 (83%)
genial, the most affectionate, the most loving, and the most lovable
of men. Success had never for an instant spoiled him. His interest
in the Theatre as an Institution--the best picturesqueness of which
may be said to be wholly due to him--was faithful to the last. His
belief in a Play, his delight in one, the ease with which it moved
him to tears or to laughter, were most remarkable evidences of the
heart he must have put into his old theatrical work, and of the
thorough purpose and sincerity with which it must have been done.
The writer was very intimately associated with him in some amateur
plays; and day after day, and night after night, there were the same
unquenchable freshness, enthusiasm, and impressibility in him,
though broken in health, even then.

No Artist can ever have stood by his art with a quieter dignity than
he always did. Nothing would have induced him to lay it at the feet
of any human creature. To fawn, or to toady, or to do undeserved
homage to any one, was an absolute impossibility with him. And yet
his character was so nicely balanced that he was the last man in the
world to be suspected of self-assertion, and his modesty was one of
his most special qualities.

He was a charitable, religious, gentle, truly good man. A genuine
man, incapable of pretence or of concealment. He had been a sailor
once; and all the best characteristics that are popularly attributed
to sailors, being his, and being in him refined by the influences of
his Art, formed a whole not likely to be often seen. There is no
smile that the writer can recall, like his; no manner so naturally
confiding and so cheerfully engaging. When the writer saw him for
the last time on earth, the smile and the manner shone out once
through the weakness, still: the bright unchanging Soul within the
DigitalOcean Referral Badge