Chapter VI: Part 6

I have ever been at a loss for a word which should express the peculiar property of an eye like that of Mrs. Siddons, which could not be called piercing or penetrating, or any thing that gives the idea of searching or acute; but it was an eye which, in its softest look, and, to a late period of her life, went straight into the depths of the soul as a ray of light finds the bottom of the ocean. Once, when I was conversing with the celebrated German critic, Boettigar, of Dresden, and he was describing the person of Madame Schirmer, after floundering in a sea of English epithets, none of which conveyed his meaning, he at last exclaimed with enthusiasm--"Madam! her eye was _perforating_!"]

[Footnote 18: In the Hunchback.]

[Footnote 19: In the Fatal Marriage.]

[Footnote 20: I recollect being present when some one was repeating to her a very high-flown and enthusiastic eulogy, of which she was the subject. She listened very quietly, and then said with indescribable _naivete_--"Perhaps I ought to blush to have all these things thus repeated to my face; but the truth is, I _cannot_. I cannot, by any effort of my own imagination, see myself as people speak of me. It gives no reflection back to my mind. I cannot fancy myself like this. All I can clearly understand is, that you and every body are very much pleased, and I am very glad of it!"]

[Footnote 21: It must be remembered that it was not _only_ fashionable incense and public applause; it was the open enthusiastic admiration of such men as Sir Walter Scott, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Moore, Rogers, Campbell, Barry Cornwall, and others of great name, who brought rich flattery in prose and in verse, and laid it at her feet. Just before she came on the stage she had spent about a year in Scotland with her excellent relative and friend, Mrs. Henry Siddons, and always referred to this period as her "Sabbatical year, granted to her to prepare her mind and principles for _this great trial_."]

[Footnote 22: Her own words.]

[Footnote 23: First published in 1827. The anecdote on which this tale is founded, I met with in the first volume of Dow's Translation of Ferishta's History of Judea.]

[Footnote 24: _Vide_ the Heetopadessa.]

[Footnote 25: Afterwards the Emperor Jehangire.]

[Footnote 26: This little tale was written in March, 1826, and in the hands of the publishers long before the appearance of Bainim's novel of "The Nowlans" which contains a similar incident, probably founded on the same fact.]

[Footnote 27: This little tale (written in 1830) is founded on a striking incident related in Humboldt's narrative. The facts remain unaltered.]

[Footnote 28: It need hardly be observed that this little trifle was written exclusively for very young actors, to whom the style was adapted; and though below all criticism, it has been included here to gratify those for whom it was originally written, and as a memorial of past times. The subject is imitated from one of Theodore Leclerq's _Proverbes Dramatiques_.]

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[Transcriber's Note: Errata as given in the original have been applied to the text. Other than the most exceedingly obvious typographical errors, all inconsistent spelling, hyphenation, diacriticals, archaic usage, etc. have been preserved as printed in the original.]

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