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CHAPTER XXXVI.
JOSEPH JEFFERSON.
The subject of this sketch is one of a race of actors. His
great-grandfather was a contemporary of some of the brightest ornaments
of the English stage, and was himself a famous actor and the intimate
friend of Garrick, Sam Foote, and Barr. He was a man of amiable and
winning disposition, and was strikingly handsome in person. He occupies
a prominent place in the history of the English stage, and is said to
have been, socially, one of the most brilliant men of his day. He died
in 1807. In 1795 his son came to America. Of him, Dunlap, in his
"History of the American Stage," says, referring to him, in February,
1797: "He was then a youth, but even then an artist. Of a small and
light figure, well formed, with a singular physiognomy, a nose perfectly
Grecian, and blue eyes full of laughter, he had the faculty of exciting
mirth to as great a degree by power of feature, although handsome, as
any ugly-featured low comedian ever seen." F.C. Wemyss has said of him
at a later day: "Mr. Joseph Jefferson was an actor formed in Nature's
merriest mood--a genuine son of Momus.
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