Not one
of his sparkling sentences was lost. I remember minutely how he
delivered each in succession, and cannot by any effort imagine how any
of them could be altered for the better. No man could deliver brilliant
dialogue-the dialogue of Congreve or of Wycherley-because none
understood it-half so well as John Kemble. His Valentine, in _Love for
Love_, was, to my recollection, faultless. He flagged sometimes in the
intervals of tragic passion. He would slumber over the level parts of
an heroic character. His Macbeth has been known to nod. But he always
seemed to me to be particularly alive to pointed and witty dialogue.
The relaxing levities of tragedy have not been touched by any since
him--the playful court-bred spirit in which he condescended to the
players in Hamlet--the sportive relief which he threw into the darker
shades of Richard--disappeared with him. He had his sluggish moods,
his torpors--but they were the halting-stones and resting-place of his
tragedy--politic savings, and fetches of the breath--husbandry of the
lungs, where nature pointed him to be an economist--rather, I think,
than errors of the judgment.
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