Hence the dramas, written
expressly and deliberately to his measure and capacity, of "Daddy
Hardacre," "The Porter's Knot," and "The Chimney-Corner." When I say
written, I mean, of course, translated. Our foremost dramatists have not
yet ceased to borrow from the French; but, like the gypsies, they so
skilfully mutilate the children they have stolen, that the theft becomes
almost impossible to detect. Not one person in five hundred, for
instance, would discover at first sight that a play so apparently
English in conception and structure as the "Ticket-of-Leave Man" is, in
reality, a translation from the French.
The success achieved by Robson in the dramas I have named was extended,
and was genuine. In _Daddy Hardacre_, a skilful adaptation of the usurer
in Balzac's "Eugenie Grandet," he was tremendous. It made me more than
ever wishful to see him in the griping, ruthless _Overreach_, foiled at
last in his wicked ambition and driven to frenzy by the destruction of
the document by which he thought to satisfy his lust of gain. Moliere's
_Avare_ I thought he would have acted wonderfully; Ben Jonson's
_Volpone_, in "The Fox," he would surely have understood, and powerfully
rendered. In the devoted father of "The Porter's Knot" he was likewise
most excellent: quiet, unaffected, unobtrusive, never forcing sentiment
upon you, never obtaining tears by false pretences, but throughout
solid, sterling, natural, admirable.
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