Letter XXVI

Summary

I REMEMBER when Kean, in the first flush of his reputation, announced his intention of spending Passion-week in Edinburgh, to have seen a paragraph extracted from a Scots newspaper, in which this circumstance was commented on in a way, that I could scarcely help regarding as a little ridiculous. I cannot recall the exact words; but the northern editor expressed himself somewhat in this style—“We are happy to hear it rumoured, that the celebrated new actor, Mr Kean, proposes making his first appearance on our boards during the approaching holidays. He no doubt feels much anxiety to have the favourable opinion of the London public confirmed and sanctioned by the more fastidious and delicate discrimination, which, as all the sons of Thespis are well aware, belongs to the enlightened and refined, although candid and generous, audience of our metropolis.”

What the measure of Mr Kean's anxiety on this occasion might really have been, I possess no means of learning; but from all that I have seen and heard of the Edinburgh audience, I must confess I do not think, were I myself an actor, their favourable verdict would be exactly the crowning and finishing grace, for which I should wait with any very supernatural timidity of expectation. That they should for a moment dream of themselves as being entitled to claim weight and authority, equal (to say nothing of superior) to what is claimed and received by the great audience of the British capital—this is a thing, at the first glance, so superabounding in absurdity, that I could scarcely have believed it to be actually the case, unless, from innumerable little circumstances and expressions which have fallen under my own observation, I had been compelled to do so. How old this ridiculous prejudice of self-complacency may be, I know not; but I suspect that it, like many other ridiculous prejudices of the place, has been fostered and pampered into its present luxurious growth by the clamorous and triumphant success of the Edinburgh Review.