impressions and reports. Of Roscius and Betterton we must accept the
names and allow the fame. We can see Reynolds's pictures, we can hear
Handel's music, we can read Goldsmith's and Johnson's books; but of
Garrick what can we have but a name, and somebody's account of what he
thought of Garrick? The touch of Shakespeare we can feel as well as
did our ancestors, and our great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren
will feel it as fully as we. But the voice of Malibran lingers in only
a few happy memories, and we know Mrs. Siddons better by Sir Joshua's
portrait than by her own glories.

It is, therefore, impossible to decide what relative rank among
actresses Rachel occupies. Mrs. Jameson, in her _Common-Place Book of
Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies_, says some sharp things of her, and
Mrs. Jameson is a critic of too delicate a mind not to be heeded. The
general view she takes of Rachel is, that she is not a great artist in
the true sense of the word. She is a finished actress, but not an
artist fine enough to conceal her art. The last scene of "Adrienne
Lecouvreur" seems to Mrs. Jameson a mistake and a failure--so beyond
the limits of art, a mere imitation of a repulsive physical fact; and
finally she pronounces that Rachel has talent but not genius; while it
is the "entire absence of the high poetic element which distinguishes
Rachel as an actress, and places her at such an immeasurable distance
from Mrs. Siddons, that it shocks me to hear their names together".

It may be fairly questioned, whether a woman so refined and cultivated
as Mrs. Jameson may not have judged Rachel rather by her wants as a
woman than by her excellence as an artist. That the terrible last
scene of "Adrienne" is a harrowing imitation of nature we have
conceded. The play is, in truth, a mere melodrama. It is a vaudeville
of costume, with a frightful catastrophe appended. But as an artist