He possessed uncommon versatility.

That after twenty years of the new Rip Van Winkle, when he was past fifty years of age, he could come back to such parts as Caleb Plummer and Acres is proof of this.

He need not have done so at all.

Carrying a pension roll of dependents aggregating fifteen or twenty thousand a year for more than a quarter of a century, Rip would still have sufficed his requirements.

It was his love for his art that took him to The Cricket and The Rivals, and at no inconsiderable cost to himself.
I have heard ill-natured persons, some of them envious actors, say that he did nothing for the stage.
He certainly did not make many contributions to its upholstery.