It
would be idle, in the endeavor to give him something like a palpable
aspect to people who have never seen him, to compare him with other
great actors yet extant, or who have gone before. In his bursts of
passion, in his vehement soliloquies, in the soul-harrowing force of his
simulated invective, he is said to resemble Edmund Kean; but how are you
to judge of an actor who in his comic moments certainly approaches the
image we have formed to ourselves of Munden and Dowton, of Bannister and
Suett? To say that he is a Genius, and the Prince of Eccentrics, is
perhaps the only way to cut the Gordian knot of criticism in his
instance.
Let me add, in conclusion, that Robson, off the stage, is one of the
mildest, modestest, most unassuming of men. Painfully nervous he always
was. I remember, a dozen years since, and when I was personally
unacquainted with him, writing in some London newspaper a eulogistic
criticism on one of his performances. I learned from friends that he had
read the article, and had expressed himself as deeply grateful to me for
it. I just knew him by sight; but for months afterwards, if I met him in
the street, he used to blush crimson, and made as sudden a retreat round
the nearest corner as was possible. He said afterwards that he hadn't
the courage to thank me.
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