When at length he had reached his full
maturity, he stood without a living rival as the representative of
leading Shakespearian characters; and maintaining this supremacy down
to his retirement from the stage, closed the line of great tragedians
and left a place which after the lapse of a quarter of a century still
remains unfilled. His high personal worth and his efforts to exalt and
purify the drama won him golden opinions from all sorts of men; and,
with the exception of Garrick, no actor probably ever mingled as
largely or came into as close relations with persons distinguished in
other and alien walks of life. Mere fashionable society he seems never
to have frequented, and his labors were too pressing and onerous to
allow of that continuous companionship with a chosen circle in which
men of letters or of science, however industrious, are generally able
to find relaxation. But he came in contact, at one time or another,
with most of the celebrated people of his day on both sides of the
Atlantic, his friendship was sought and prized by many of them, and
the occasional glimpses we get of them in his _Diaries_ are of a kind
to deepen our regret that the _Reminiscences_, in which the power of
skillfully elaborating his material is sufficiently evidenced, should
close abruptly just when the sources of its interest were becoming
wider and fuller.
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