On the contrary, he was proud of it.

His mother had lived and died an actress.

He preferred that his progeny should follow in the footsteps of their forebears even as he had done.

It is beside the purpose to inquire, as was often done, what might have happened had he undertaken the highest flights of tragedy; one might as well discuss the relation of a Dickens to a Shakespeare.

Sir Henry Irving and Sir Charles Wyndham in England, M.Coquelin in France, his contemporaries--each had his _metier_.