MID-VICTORIAN PERIOD 145

A PRODUCT OF HIS TIME.

The condition of the Stage is sometimes a consequence of the actors who are upon it, but sometimes the actors who are upon it are a consequence of its condition,-remotely, of course, of the forces by which it is controlled. Montague was an actor of the latter class. He was not a leader: he could never have established a tradition: but he reflected perfectly a popular spirit of his day,-a spirit actively sympathetic with the lambent satire of T. W. Robertson, the piquant drollery of H. J. Byron, and the half-playful, half-bitter cynicism of W. S. Gilbert. Those were frequent characteristics of English plays about the mid-Victorian period, and in those plays Montague was well fitted. His manner was elegant. He possessed repose, sentiment, a kind of wistful aspect, sensibility, a certain sapient drollery, and a telling quality of demure banter. He lacked intensity. He would have been finical in such a part as Raphael, in "The Marble Heart," and paltry in such parts as are typified by Shakespeare's

Gratiano. His limitations were stringent, and they were obvious. He was restricted to the comedy of everyday life, in good society. His talents were not versatile, nor was his acting marked by any of those striking features which it is usual to designate as character. He used water colors, and his touch,-light, easy, and delicate, was always the same. In the latter part of his life he endured severe professional tests, side by side with the foremost and finest light comedian of his generation, Lester Wallack, and he acted thoroughly,-showing dignity, modesty, taste, and grace.

If partial friendship over-estimated his talents or envy misrepresented the nature of his success, or detraction vilified his attitude toward his art, that was only "the rough brake that virtue must go through." He was exceptionally free from the vanity that characterizes most actors. He carried to the Stage the feelings and manners of a gentleman and he carried to society the poetry and romance of the Stage. He was earnest and frank, unostentatious, sometimes sweetly grave, sometimes quietly

EARLY DEATH

147

gay, always companionable. His artistic labor, if his life had been prolonged, could not have failed to win for him a high rank as a romantic actor. He was steadily gaining in power. He died while yet his honors were unripe and the promise of his young manhood was unfilled. His death occurred, August 11, 1878, in San Francisco, where he had been acting in a company on tour. His grave is in the Wallack plot, in Greenwood. It has been my fortune to know, in good-fellowship, many of the actors who have passed across the American Stage within the last sixty years, many bright spirits who have gladdened life for a while and then vanished into the great darkness that awaits us all. With their gracious names I write the name of Harry Montague. In life he deserved affection, and his memory deserves honor. He was one of the gentlest beings I have known, and so, in the apt words of Sir Walter,

"I bring my tribute to his grave:

"Tis little-but 'tis all I have."

V.

EDWIN BOOTH.

1833-1893.

"He has shook hands with Time; his funeral urn

Shall be my charge.”

THERE was a great shower of meteors on the night of November 13, 1883, and on that night, at Belair, near Baltimore, Maryland, was born the most famous tragic actor of America, Edwin Booth. No other American actor had a rise so rapid or a career so early and continuously brilliant as that of Edwin Booth. His father, the renowned Junius Brutus Booth, had wreathed the family name with distinction and romantic interest. If ever there was a genius on the stage it was the elder Booth. His wonderful eyes, tremendous vitality, electrical action, power to thrill the feelings and easily and inevitably to awaken pity and terror,-all