PREFACE. THE sketches and essays which occupy the following pages, necessarily partaking more or less of a personal character-the author so often speaking of his own experience or observations-there would seem to be required no further preface at his hands. He cannot, however, neglect to avail himself of the time-honored privilege of saying a word to the reader, were it only to exchange the customary form of salutation when meeting. For he would have his book regarded not as an elaborate attempt at authorshipto which he makes no pretensions-but in the spirit of a familiar and friendly, yet earnest conversation, when one is listened to with partiality, as he discourses upon topics of admitted interest, or revises the traits of those whom the world has been accustomed to admire. These papers have been written at intervals in the course of many and now by-gone years, as the respec tive occasions prompted. In bringing them together at the present time, the writer would acknowledge his obligations to his accomplished friend, Mr. EDWARD S. GOULD, whose judgment he has consulted in the general arrangement of the volume, and to whose friendly assistance he has been indebted in seeing these pages through the press, during their writer's own unavoidable absence from the city. JAMES H. HACKETT. NEW YORK, December, 1862. ACTORS OF HAMLET-COOPER, WALLACK, CONWAY, HAM- BLIN, EDMUND KEAN, YOUNG, MACREADY, CHARLES CORRESPONDENCE ON SHAKESPEAREAN SUBJECTS WITH JOHN |