', p. 9). Miss Berry's criticism is supported by good authority.
Lewes ('On Actors and the Art of Acting', pp. 6, 11), while calling him
"a consummate master of passionate expression," denies his capacity for
representing "the intellectual side of heroism."
Kean preferred the Coal-Hole Tavern in the Strand, and the society of
the Wolf Club, to Lord Holland's dinner-parties. Though he never fell so
low as Cooke, his recklessness, irregularities, eccentricities, and
habits of drinking, in spite of the large sums of money that passed
through his hands, made his closing days neither prosperous nor
reputable.
Such effect had the passionate energy of Kean's acting on Byron's mind,
that, once, in seeing him play "Sir Giles Overreach," he was so affected
as to be seized with a sort of convulsive fit. Some years later, in
Italy, when the representation of Alfieri's tragedy of 'Mirra' had
agitated him in the same violent manner, he compared the two instances
as the only ones in his life when "any thing under reality" had been
able to move him so powerfully.
"To such lengths," says Moore, "did he, at this time, carry his
enthusiasm for Kean, that when Miss O'Neil appeared, and, by her
matchless representation of feminine tenderness, attracted all eyes
and hearts, he was not only a little jealous of her reputation, as
interfering with that of his favourite, but, in order to guard himself
against the risk of becoming a convert, refused to go to see her act.
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