Before putting on the gloves with his pupil for the first time, Hernizer sat down with him and talked with him for half an hour in a wise and kindly manner on the morality of the art, or the true spirit in which it should be approached. He summed up in terse maxims the principles which ought to govern all who practise it, and enforced them with apt illustrations. He warned him especially never to lose his temper, and never to presume on the advantages of his skill to strike any man unnecessarily. He said that every boxer who had the instincts of a gentleman was made more generous and forbearing by his safeguard of reserved power. Forrest, eager to be at the work, and scarcely appreciating the propriety or value of the lecture, listened to it impatiently at the time, but remembered it with profit and gratitude all his life. As he recalled the circumstances and lingered over the narrative forty years later, a light of retrospective fondness
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played in his eyes, and his tongue seemed laved and lambent with love.
When he had taken lessons for about six months, one day when his nervous centres were aching with fulness of power, as he was sparring with his teacher, a sort of good-natured berserker rage came over him. The ancestral instincts of love of battle burned in his muscles, and he longed to pitch into the strife in right down sincerity. "Come, now, Hernizer," he cried, "let us try it for once in real earnest." "Pshaw! no, no!" replied the master, parrying him off. But waxing warmer and warmer in the play he pressed hard on him, putting in the licks so hot and heavy that at last Hernizer, rallying on his resources, fetched him a blow fair between the eyes that made him see stars and sent him reeling against the wall. "I have got enough!" exclaimed Forrest, with a laugh, as soon as he could collect himself, and went and threw his arms around his teacher; and the two athletes stood in a smiling embrace, their naked breasts clasped together, and the great waves of warm blood mantling through them. Such a passage would have made untrained and nervous men angry or sullen, but it only made these giants laugh with pleasure and sharpened their fellowship. However, Forrest said, he never again asked Hernizer to buckle to it in earnest.
Forrest did not inherit that herculean poise of power which for half a century made him such a massive mark of popular admiration. He attained it by training. And herein he is a splendid example to his countrymen, thousands on thousands of whom, in their whining debility, dyspeptic pallor, and fidgety activity, need nothing else so much as a thorough physical regimen to replenish their blood, soothe their exasperated nerves, and give a solid equilibrium to their energies. The Greeks and Romans, the nobles and knights of the Middle Age, were wiser than we in securing a superb physical basis for human perfection. Men like Plato, Pericles, Æschylus, Sophocles, were foremost in the palæstra as well as in the lists of mind. There never was another time or land in which the excited suspicions and emulations of society tended so terribly as in our own to fret and haggardize men and prematurely break them down and wear them out. Our incessant reading, our excessive brain-work, cloys the memory, impoverishes the heart, wearies the soul, and destroys the capacity
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"The committee to whom the matter had been referred reported that a gold medal, with a bust of Mr. Forrest in profile on one side, surrounded by a legend in these words, Histriom Optimo, Eduino Forrest, Viro Præstanti, and a figure of the genius of Tragedy with suitable emblems on the other, surrounded, as a legend, with the following quotation from Shakspeare, 'Great in mouths of wisest censure,' would perhaps constitute the most expressive and acceptable token of those sentiments of admiration and regard which it was the wish of the subscribers to testify to Mr. Forrest. The report having been unanimously adopted, the task of drawing up suitable designs was confided to Mr. Charles C. Ingham. The dies were engraved by Mr. C. C. Wright.
"In accordance with the suggestions of many citizens, a public dinner to Mr. Forrest was agreed upon as furnishing the most appropriate opportunity of presenting to him this token of their regard. To this end a committee was charged to make the
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necessary arrangements, and the following is their invitation addressed to Mr. Forrest, together with his reply:
"New York, July 10, 1834.
"To Edwin Forrest, Esq.
"Dear Sir,—A number of your friends, learning your intention shortly to visit Europe, are desirous, before your departure, of an opportunity of expressing, in some public manner, their sense of your merits, professional and personal. It would be a source of regret to them if one so esteemed, while sojourning in foreign lands, should possess no memorial of the regard entertained for him in his own.
"We have been charged as a committee, with a view to carry this purpose into execution, to request the pleasure of your company at a dinner, at the City Hotel, on any day most agreeable to yourself.
"With sincere esteem and respect,
"We are your ob't serv'ts,
William Dunlap,
R. R. Ward,
Henry Ogden,
John V. Greenfield,
William P. Hawes,
Abraham Asten,
George D. Strong,
Prosper M. Wetmore.
"Washington Hotel, July 12th, 1834.
"Gentlemen,—I have had the honor to receive your communication of the 10th instant, inviting me to dine with a number of my friends at the City Hotel previous to my approaching departure for Europe, and signifying a desire to bestow upon me some token of regard, which, as I journey in foreign lands, may preserve in my memory the friends I leave in my own.
"I have received too many and too important testimonials from my friends in New York to render any additional memorial necessary for the purpose you indicate. But, knowing the pleasure which generous natures feel in bestowing benefactions, I accept with lively satisfaction the invitation you have conveyed to me in such grateful terms; and may be excused if, in doing so, I express my regret that the object of your kindness is not more worthy so distinguished a mark of favor.
"With your permission, gentlemen, I will name Friday, the
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25th instant, as the day when it will best comport with the arrangements I have already made, to meet you as proposed.
"I am, with sentiments of great
respect and regard,
your ob't serv't,
"Edwin Forrest.
"Messrs. Wm. Dunlap, and others.
"On Friday last, the day named by Mr. Forrest, this gratifying testimonial of regard for an individual whose character as a citizen, not less than his genius as an actor, has insured for him general respect, was carried into effect at the City Hotel. The repast provided for the occasion by Mr. Jennings, the accomplished director of that establishment, displayed all that taste and splendor for which his entertainments are remarkable. At six o'clock a very numerous company, comprising a large number of our most distinguished and talented citizens, sat down to the table. The Honorable Wm. T. McCoun, Vice-Chancellor, presided, assisted by General Prosper M. Wetmore, Mr. Justice Lownds, and Alderman Geo. D. Strong as Vice-Presidents. On the right of the President was seated the guest in whose honor the feast was provided, and on his left the Honorable Cornelius W. Lawrence, Mayor of the City. Among the guests were the managers of the several principal theatres in the United States in which the genius of Mr. Forrest has been most frequently exercised, together with several of the most esteemed members of the theatrical profession; among them the veteran Cooper and the inimitable and estimable Placide.
"On the removal of the cloth the following regular toasts were proposed:
"REGULAR TOASTS.
"1. The Drama.—The mirror of nature, in which life, like Narcissus, delights to contemplate its own image.
"2. Shakspeare.—Like his own Banquo, 'father of a line of kings'—monarchs who rule with absolute sway the passions and sympathies of the human heart.
"Previous to offering the third toast, the chairman, Chancellor McCoun, addressed the company in the following terms:
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"To your kindness and partiality, gentlemen, I owe it that the pleasing duty devolves upon me of consummating the object for which we are this day met together. To render a suitable acknowledgment to worth is one of the most grateful employments of generous minds. But with how much more alacrity is such an office undertaken when the worth is of so mingled a character that it equally commands the admiration of our intellects and the applause of our hearts, and when it is to be exercised not for merit of foreign growth and already stamped with foreign approbation, but for the offspring of our own soil and nursed into fame by our own encouragement.
"Eight years ago a youth came to this city unheralded and almost unknown. His first introduction to the community was through one of those acts of kindness on his part by which his whole subsequent career has been distinguished. To add a few dollars to the slender means of a poor but industrious and worthy native actor, this youth, his diffidence overcome by his sympathy, appeared in the arduous character of Othello before a metropolitan audience. What was the astonishment and delight of the spectators when, instead of a raw and ungainly tyro, they beheld one who needed only a few finishing touches to render him the peer of the proudest in his art! A rival theatre was then rapidly rising under the superintendence of a man who has had few superiors as a director of the mimic world of the stage. To this theatre the unheralded youth (now the 'observed of all observers') was speedily transferred, and during the most brilliant period of its history was its 'bright particular star.' Allured by the strange and attractive light, the wealth, the talent, the fashion and respectability of the city nightly crowded its benches. The carriages of the luxurious were drawn up in long retinue before its doors, and the laborious left their tasks and repaired in throngs to sit entranced beneath the actor's potent spell. Not Goodman's Fields, when Garrick burst, a kindred prodigy, on the astonished London audience, displayed nightly a gayer scene nor resounded with heartier plaudits.
"Such success naturally elicited from rival theatres the most splendid offers; yet, though earning a poor stipend and held but by a verbal tie, this honorable boy—his prospects altered but his mind the same—gave promptly such replies as showed that he
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valued integrity at its proper price. I shall be pardoned for thus adverting to one such instance among the many that might be adduced as finely illustrative of his character to whose honor it is mentioned.
"The time soon came, however, when he began to reap a harvest of profit as well as fame. And one of the first uses to which he turned his prosperity was to arouse the dramatic talent of his countrymen. The fruits of his liberality and judgment are several of the most popular and meritorious tragedies which have been produced on the modern stage. One of them, wholly American in its character and incidents, has been performed more frequently and with more advantage to the theatres than any other play in the same period of time on either side of the Atlantic. Though not without defects as a drama, it has the merit of presenting a strong and natural portrait of one of the most remarkable warriors of a race the last relics of which are fast melting away before the advancing tide of civilization. Yet, whatever the intrinsic qualities of the production, no one has witnessed it without feeling that its popularity is mainly to be ascribed to the bold, faithful, and spirited personation of the principal character; and, as the original of Metamora died with King Philip, so his scenic existence will terminate with the actor who introduced him to the stage. Among the other dramatic productions which the same professional perspicuity and generous feeling gave rise to are two or three of extraordinary merit. One of them, The Gladiator, for scenic effect, strongly-marked and well-contrasted characters, and fine nervous language, is surpassed by few dramas of modern times.
"But while this young actor was thus encouraging with liberal hand the literary genius of our countrymen, many an admiring audience beheld through the medium of his personations the noblest creations of the noblest bards of the Old World 'live o'er the scene' in all that reality which only acting gives.
"''Tis by the mighty actor brought,
Illusion's perfect triumphs come;
Verse ceases to be airy thought,
And sculpture to be dumb.'
"Gentlemen, I have thus far dwelt on points in this performer's
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history and character with which you are all acquainted. There are other topics on which I might touch—did I not fear to invade the sanctuary of the heart—not less entitled to your admiration. But there are some feelings in breasts of honor and delicacy which, though commendable, cannot brook exposure; as there are plants which flourish in the caves of ocean that wither when brought to the light of day. I shall therefore simply say that in his private relations, as in his public career, he has performed well his part, and made esteem a twin sentiment with admiration in every heart that knows him. I need not tell you, gentlemen, that I speak of Edwin Forrest.
"Mr. Forrest is on the eve of departure for foreign lands. To a man combining so many claims on our regard, it has been thought proper by his fellow-citizens to present a farewell token of friendship and respect,—a token which may at once serve to keep him mindful that Americans properly appreciate the genius and worth of their own land, and which may testify to foreigners the high place he holds in our esteem.
"Mr. Forrest, I now place this memorial in your hands. It is one in which many of your countrymen have been emulous to bear a part. It is a proud proof of unusual virtues and talents, and as such may be proudly worn. You will mingle in throngs where jewelled insignia glitter on titled breasts; but yours may justly be the reflection that few badges of distinction are the reward of qualities so deserving of honor as those attested by the humbler memorial which now rests upon your bosom.
"Gentlemen, I propose to you,—
"Edwin Forrest—Estimable for his virtues, admirable for his talents. Good wishes attend his departure, and warm hearts will greet his return.
"The speaker was interrupted at different points of his address with the most enthusiastic applause, and on its conclusion the apartment resounded with unanimous, hearty, and prolonged cheers, attesting at once the concurrence of his hearers in the justness of his sentiments and their sense of the happy and eloquent language in which they were conveyed. When this applause at length subsided, Mr. Forrest rose, and in a style of simple and
