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A DRAMATIC CRITIC
completely the story of Mr. Irving's later
career in England has been repeated in
America. Twenty years or more of Lon-
don have already been epitomized in a
year of New York, Boston, and Chicago.
We also now have a small but knowing
faction who violently reject and refuse him,
denying him even the name of actor; a
large and fashionable class who are inclined
to demonstrate their culture by taking him
as the object of a cult; a great public who
accept him, with all his demerits, as an
artist of remarkable parts and powers. In
other words, Mr. Irving has met with full
and hearty recognition in America, and
with a remarkable measure of success.
And although the voice of fierce dispraise
is not and never will be quite silenced, the
number of conversions which have been
made from the ranks of his early detractors
is comically large. The " heretics," who
used to go to scoff, already remain, as Mr.
Archer says, "not, perhaps, to pray, but
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