generation of theatre-goers, presented the rare spectacle of a remarkable
actress who was at the same time a woman of ntellect. This fact may be illustrated not merely by her assumption of such unusual roles as those of Antigone and lphigenia, or of the Lady in Milton's Comus, but by her critical studies, published after she had left the stage, on Shakespeare's female characters, and in general by the im- pression she created on such men as De Quincey, Ruskin, Edouard Thierry, and, above all, Browning. It is also worthy of note that she was the original heroine of three of Browning's plays : Strafford, Colombe's Birthday, and The Blot on the Scuteheon. Browning's tribute to her after the production of the last-named piece is worth quoting. "You have twice," he says, "Proved my Bird of Paradise," and concludes :— " Genius is a common story, Few guess that the spirit's glory They hail nightly is the sweetest, Fairest, gentlest and completest Shakspere's-Lady ever poet Longed for! Few guess this : I know it."
Lady Martin, like Ristori, was one of the very few great actresses who have not been either stupid, ignorant, or vulgar off the stage. Thackeray's picture of the Fotheringay was no caricature. M. Legouve in his entertaining reminiscences relates bow an actress famous in the early decades of this centary—Mlle. Duchesnois—once broke out at his father's table with the remark, "That poor Henri IV., M. Legouve,— to think that if Ravaillac had not killed him, he would perhaps be alive now !"
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