Should we really care for the greatest actors of the past could
    we have them before us? Should we find them too different from
    our accent of thought, of feeling, of speech, in a thousand minute
    particulars which are of the essence of all three? Dr. Doran's
5   long and interesting records of the triumphs of Garrick, and other
    less familiar, but in their day hardly less astonishing, players,
    do not relieve one of the doubt. Garrick himself, as sometimes
    happens with people who have been the subject of much anecdote
    and other conversation, here as elsewhere, bears no very distinct
10  figure. One hardly sees the wood for the trees. On the other hand,
    the account of Betterton, "perhaps the greatest of English
    actors," is delightfully fresh. That intimate friend of Dryden,
    Tillatson, Pope, who executed a copy of the actor's portrait by
    Kneller which is still extant, was worthy of their friendship;
15  his career brings out the best elements in stage life. The stage
    in these volumes presents itself indeed not merely as a mirror of
    life, but as an illustration of the utmost intensity of life, in
    the fortunes and characters of the players. Ups and downs,
    generosity, dark fates, the most delicate goodness, have nowhere
20  been more prominent than in the private existence of those devoted
    to the public mimicry of men and women. Contact with the stage,
    almost throughout its history, presents itself as a kind of
    touchstone, to bring out the bizarrerie, the theatrical tricks
    and contrasts, of the actual world.