Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/289

Macready voice, but his physical advantages were not great, and his face in his early years scarcely escaped the charge of ugliness. He has had no superior, however, in characters in which tragedy and what is known as character acting dispute for mastery; in others, including even Lear, he seems to have left no successor. Hazlitt's praise does not extend beyond the employment of terms such as 'natural, easy, and forcible,' Talfourd declared Macready the 'most romantic of actors,' comparing him with Kemble as the 'most classical' and -Kean as the 'most intensely human.' Leigh Hunt praises his 'sensibility, tenderness, passion.' Le wes speaks of a 'voice capable of delicate modulation,' and tones 'that thrilled and tones that stirred tears,' but declares his 'declamation' mannered and unmusical,' although his person was good and his face expressive. He was 'a thorough artist, very conscientious, very much in earnest.' Lewes said of his Virginius that 'in tenderness he had few rivals.' In 'Othello' 'his passion was irritability, and his agony had no grandeur.' To this, from personal recollection, we should add that his griff was unmanly. Lord Tennyson in his famous sonnet classes him with 'Garrick and statelier Kemble.' W. J. Fox thought him so high as to be above criticism and scarcely 'amenable at its bar.' 'The stream cannot rise above its fountain' (Works, Memorial edit. vi. 860). Westland Marston regards his Richelieu as perfection, and praises highly his Melantius. Macready regarded Macbeth with most favour, but Werner was his masterpiece. Those rapid transitions which distinguished his acting on the stage seem to have been a part of his character. Marston tells how from petulance and anger with those concerned with a rehearsal he would turn with instant courtesy and urbanity to his guests. He was in the habit of working himself up into a passion by physical exertion, shaking a ladder or adopting other methods before going on the stage in a scene of violence, and it is said he employed strong objurgations under his breath when fighting with his adversaries. He was capable of great generosity, and won the high esteem of the best men of his epoch. His disposition was, however, unamiable and almost morose as well as violent. He strove hard to check his quarrelsome propensities, and in the end almost succeeded. His tendency to introspection led him at times to put his own conduct in an unfavourable light. His 'Diary' is a curious mixture of vanity and assertion, with a genuine wish to reform.

Portraits of Macready are numerous. One by John Jackson, R.A. [q. v.], as Henry IV, possibly given by himself to Mathews, is now in the Garrick Club. He is presented in a score of different characters in plates in Tallis's dramatic periodicals.  MACRO, COX (1683–1767), antiquary, was eldest son of Thomas Macro, grocer, alderman, and five times chief magistrate of Bury St. Edmunds (d. 26 May 1737, aged 88). Thomas Macro lived and made his fortune in the ancient house in the Meat Market, Bury, usually known, from the observatory on its top, as Cupola House, and he purchased the estate of Little Haugh, in the neighbouring parish of Norton, for his country house. He married, 9 Jan. 1678-9, Susan, only daughter and heiress of the Rev. John Cox, rector of Risby, near Bury, and great-granddaughter of Dr. Richard Cox [q. v.], bishop of Ely. She died on 29 April 1743. The son, Cox Macro, was born in 1683, and received his baptismal name from his mother's surname. This ludicrous conjunction provoked a friend to whom he applied for an appropriate motto for his family to suggest the punning device of 'Cocks may crow.' He was educated at Bury grammar school by the Rev. Edward Leeds, and the Latin speech which he made at the school before the Bishop of Norwich, on 15 May 1699, is still extant. He matriculated at Jesus College, Cambridge, but migrated to Christ's College on 19 Jan. 1701-2, in order, as the Latin entry in the books says, to enjoy better health (mutato cœlo), and to study medicine. On 3 Sept. 1703 he entered at Leyden University, where he studied under Boerhaave (, Index of Leyden Students, p. 64). He proceeded LL.B. at Cambridge in 1710, D.D. in 1717, and he was at the time of his death the senior doctor in divinity of the university. He was chaplain to George II, but the possession of an ample fortune placed him above the need of further preferment. Richard Hurd [q. v.] was curate during 1742-3 of a parish near 