KEMBLE, Jonx He was carefully educated, with a view to his adoption of one of the learned professions as a career, his father not designing that he should follow the stage. Roger Kemble was both an actor and the manager of a pro vincial theater; and, one after another, all of Ids children attempted the drama, with dif ferent degrees of success. John was an excellent scholar, and his memory was so tena cious that it is said pf him, when at school, he committed MOO lines of Homer and recited them without an error. His last performance was at Covent Garden theater, June 23,1817, when hp played " Coriolanus." The next two years were occupied in travel, during which he visited Rome, having often expressed a desire to pass some time among the scenes made famous by Cato, Brutus, and Coriolanus, whom he had so often repre sented during his stage life. At the last lie settled at Lausanne, where he was attacked with the fit of apoplexy which resulted in his death. While Kemble wits a great natural actor, his magnificent effects were not produced without profound study. In his ordi
nary social life he was easy and unconventional in his manner; not in least, when off the stage, assuming that presence which it seemed' impossible for Mrs. Siddons ever to put away from her. But once. engrossed in the character which lie -had undertaken, he became merged in it, and took on a dignity of mien and a loftiness of delivery that were imperial. It. was this marvelous capacity to embody the more sublime charac ters of the drama, and particularly the creations of Shakespeare, that distinguished Kern ble from all other actors of his time. In assuming these impersonations lie appeared to become imbued with the spirit and the atmosphere of the age and race indicated, and was no longer an actor, or even an Englishman. Possibly, until the appearance of Sal vini, lie had no successor who could so divest himself of nationality, and so perfectly conform to the requirements of an alien character.