The Times spoke of him as "an able if not a great actor." If Joseph Jefferson was not a great actor I should like some competent person to tell me what actor of our time could be so described.
Two or three of the journals of Paris referred to him as "the American Coquelin." It had been apter to describe Coquelin as the French Jefferson.

I never saw Frederic Lemaitre.

But, him apart, I have seen all the eccentric comedians, the character actors of the last fifty years, and, in spell power, in precision and deftness of touch, in acute, penetrating, all-embracing and all-embodying intelligence and grasp, I should place Joseph Jefferson easily at their head.
Shakespeare was his Bible.

The stage had been his cradle.

He continued all his days a student.