gifts; there was no impatience, no complaining, but a steady, dogged power of perseverance, with the profound conviction of their own capabilities to make use of fortune when it came. At last he appeared as Stukeley to his sister's Mrs. Beverley, in The Gamester. Finely as the part was played, the sister, not the brother, carried away the honours of the performance.
After this, on several benefit nights they were able to appear together, Kemble replacing Smith in the character of Macbeth to Mrs. Siddons's Lady Macbeth, and both of them acting later in Othello, he as the Moor, she as Desdemona. This was not a distinct success. At last, however, his power found its legitimate development. On the occasion of his sister's benefit in January 1788, he acted Lear to her Cordelia. The town was electrified, and declared him equal to Garrick. Boaden tells us "that he never played it so grandly or so touchingly as on that night."
His really great gift was his large and cultivated understanding, that enabled him to grasp the spirit of the author he sought to interpret, giving a new emphasis and truth to scenes that were hackneyed and stale by a conventional method of rendering. This was particularly the case with Shakespeare, whose beauties he and his sister first revealed to their generation. The difference, however, between them was that he possessed superlative talent, she possessed genius. In speaking to Reynolds the dramatist, she defined completely the difference between them, "My brother John, in his most impetuous bursts, is always careful to avoid any discomposure of his dress or deportment, but in the whirlwind of passion I lose all thoughts of such matters."
He is said to have nourished a tender affection for
