Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 19.djvu/770

760 light of his genius. It is this generous regard for others that secures him the esteem of audience and actors.

Outside of purely legitimate comedy, Mr. Warren has some specialties in which as an artist he stands alone and invincible, and these parts are often in the range of lowest comedy or broadest farce. And if they do not afford the same degree of intellectual pleasure that we find in his Sir Peter Teazle and kindred performances, they serve to stretch our laughter to the very “ top of our lungs,” and their whimsical oddities show us how generous and versatile a thing his genius is. His Sir Peter, with its dignity, repose, gentleness, magnanimity, and plaintive tenderness, is a portraiture satisfying, altogether finished, and complete. But as Jeremiah Beetle, in “Babes in the Wood,” Mr. Sudden, in “ Breach of Promise,” Jonathan Chickweed, in “Nursery Chickweed,” or as Mr. Golightly, in “ Lend me Five Shillings,” he stands apart from his fellows, and altogether inapproachable. He has all the exuberance and natural drollery of Clarke, all his farcical buoyancy, and to these he adds that traditional oldschool finish, which stops nowhere this side of perfection, and which Mr. Clarke and Mr. Owens have not at all, Mr. Warren’s audience cannot reason about the manner in which he plays these parts : they can only laugh and be merry over their exquisite funniness. In these characters there is the contagion of laughter in his face, gait, eyes, gesture, and voice.

But as if his genius were “general as the casing air,” Mr. Warren, while he compels our admiration in these parts, forces us to acknowledge the breadth of his powers in a purely eccentric part, — that of the poor French tutor in “ To Parents and Guardians.” And here his French scholarship stands him in good stead. In this impersonation a genius that he seldom develops shines pre-eminent, — that rare genius which makes the actor master of our tears. The whole performance is so quiet, so thoughtful, so profound in its pain and so subdued in its joy at the end, that, through all the old tutor’s sorry blunders and eccentricities, we cannot laugh at the stupid figure ; or if we do, tears underlie our mirth, and while the smile trembles on the lip, the eye grows dim with pity. So ample is Mr. Warren’s power, and with such tenderness does he cast over Tourbillon’s ludicrous side the mantle of the old exile’s griefs and sorrows, that we can see in him, not the scoff and gibe of the school, but the sorely stricken parent, recovering at last his long-lost child. There is something beautiful in this performance, (lifting it up almost to the height of Mr. Jefferson’s Rip Van Winkle.) and Mr. Warren has imparted to it a dignity and grace which only a profound genius could bestow.

In like manner he has taken from “ Masks and Faces ” a third-rate part, that of Triplett, and made it of almost the first importance in the play. No one who has seen it can forget the exquisite display of humor and pathos in this impersonation. And it is in such characters, where deep feeling alternates with whimsical oddity, that his rare facial expression has full scope. His voice is adapted with exact fidelity to the look, and to such perfection is this carried, that a blind man might almost know his expression from the emphasis of his words.

Whether in the grace and high-bred courtesy of Sir Peter, the cowardly bluster of Bob Acres, the pathos of Tourbillon, or the drollery of Peter Dunducketty, this great artist of the old school has no superior in the new one, Mr. Jefferson, in the assurance of a genius pure, steady, and true, may contest the day with him upon his own ground, and excel him off of it, but Mr. Jefferson’s method is more than half composed of the same characteristics which altogether distinguish Mr. Warren’s.

The talents of these actors are alike in great measure inherited, for their fathers in the early days of the American theatre contended, shoulder to shoul