Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/519



HE years which circled 1820 were undoubtedly the most brilliant the English drama has known. The rainbow of peace had just then spanned the European heavens and smiled away the tempest of war which for a quarter of a century had swept across the Continent, and under its benign influence the arts began to ripen and put out rich bloom. The drama shared largely in this genial growth, and the times then past, which stirred with glorious memories the people's heart, gave inspiration to a host of writers, who succeeded each other with the rapid luxuriance of the celebrated fruits in the enchanted garden—

Men whose names present an emblazoned page in the story of England—such men as Byron and Sheridan—not only devoted their genius to give grace and lustre to this noble branch of art, but even with eager pride and untiring devotion entered on the duties and difficulties of management. Nor had the star system then shed its withering blight upon the stage. The Kembles, Siddons, O'Neil, Munden, Dowton, Johnson, and Wallack—noble and honored names—needed no Crumlessian ladder of long type to lift them unfairly above their brother and sister artists, but entered, on fair and even terms, on the field, and won their decorations by faithful toil, by truthful touches and tender strokes of art. They had certainly one vast advantage over the players of our time. Good plays and good parts naturally beget good actors; and as the plays of that period still hold their place in almost unbroken and imperishable youth, so the business conceived by the genius or improved by the art of the actors of that day has been observed, with almost a sacred reverence, by the successive actors since then. The business, so full of exquisite point and delighting perfection, of Farren, of Blake, and of Gilbert, was the business of Dowton and of Munden. Their pleasantest flows of merriment have come piped from a reservoir, not gushing from a spring.

Among that brilliant cluster of -artists who gave glory to Old Drury at this time, not the least honored and renowned was Johnson, known in dramatic annals as "Irish Johnson," from having devoted himself exclusively to the portrayal of Irish character and from the perfection of his picture, which has never since been equalled, and only once approached by Power, who formed himself entirely on his model. Mr. Johnson was the original of Denis Bulgruddery and most of the leading stage Irishmen, and possessed all the qualifications to fit him for the rôle. He was what is termed in Ireland "a gentleman by birth," coming from a fine old stock in Kilkenny, famed, like Argos of old, for its noble steeds and lovely women, and, by remarkable coincidence, the native county also of Power. He had served for some time in the British army, that highest training-school for a gentleman, and, after joining the stage, mingled in the very first society of the time, where he was welcomed, not with that condescension which