an expressive countenance; but if he has it not by nature, he cannot make it such by art. Let him not hear of privations, which he cannot supply; tell him only of such errors as he is able to correct. Of all the variety of human countenances, that which is characterised by no prevailing passion is perhaps the most unlucky one an actor can be born with, as being least convertible to stage-effect; still if nature be in the heart, and inspire it with its proper feelings, the features will, in some degree at least, obey its movements. This was the case with Henderson: in his hours of perfect quietude and relaxation his eye slept, and his countenance displayed no promise; but when the spirit within him, though naturally indolent, was awakened by the genius of his poet, he rushed at once into the character he was destined to assume, and the whole man_harmonized with the passion, that he really felt. But that latent energy, which was in him, whom all the Drama's friends have reason to lament, is not the property of every man, and there will be rarely found another actor, with a countenance, that augured so little, endued with talents to effect so much. It is true that every performer, who is possessed of a powerful and well-toned voice, is responsible for the management of it, and should not upon all occasions send it round the theatre in compliment to those, who are only in the lobbies. There are not many occasions, that demand of the performer to draw out all the stops of his organ: the proper government and adaptation of its tones is a secret, which but few possess, and yet it is the grand desideratum of all public speaking." The ear, the judgement and the feelings of the declaimer must unite their influence and conspire to aid him in the attainment of that nice discrimination, in which consists the very excel lence of his art, and which alone can crown his efforts with success; for should he strive to elevate what in itself is low, and to depress what should be lofty, does that actor understand his author, or consult his reason? Though his entrance on the stage as a hero or a king may be announced with a flourish, he is not obliged to out-talk his own trumpets, neither is it always necessary for him to make his exit in a passion. I confess that whilst our two overgrown theatres were standing, this art, of which I have been speaking, was no easy attainment; yet I think our chief Tragedian Mr. Kemble fully un derstood the importance of it, and practised it successfully; though vehement exertion of the lungs, unhappily for him, was what his frame could ill endure, yet by distinct articula tion, and a certain high-pitched modulation, approaching in acuteness to what is called a falsetta, he was perfectly well heard in all parts of the theatre, and by never suffering his voice to sink from the sharpness of its key into those guttural and growling flats, in which his sister has accustomed herself to pitch her inaudible pathetic, he affords a striking proof to what great and judicious account even the sparing gifts of nature may be turned by the economy of art. How very few possess that delicacy of ear, which should regulate the voice in reading or reciting to few or many, in a large space or a small! Neither Henderson, nor even Garrick, understood this secret, of distinguishing rightly between a play-house and a private room. Of the two, Henderson was the more ungovernably above pitch; yet Garrick had indulged himself in the habit of bawling out to servants and stage-retainers, till he broke the finer notes of his natural organ, and only spared the clapper of his bell. Let Mr. Pope be never strenuous but when he has something sturdy to contend with, and be in every part as true to nature, as he is in Shakespear's Henry the Eighth, he may defy criticism. Mr. Hunt has laid down many admirable rules of general utility let me add one more, and if I particularly address it to Mr. Pope, I am persuaded his good sense will take it in good part the advice I would offer to him is not to take Horace's word upon trust, and be so free to sob and show the signal of his sorrows to the spectators, lest they should not be in the humour to obey it, and leave him perhaps to the solitary self-indulgence of bewailing (which some may interpret as applauding) his own exquisite emotions. I have seen Barry weep; but there were not many dry eyes in the theatre when his gave way; and Henderson I have reason to believe never shed tears, but when he could not help it. Therefore I am tempted to advise Mr. Pope and Mr. Elliston, and all those whimpering gentlemen, and whining ladies, who affect a pleonasm in the pathetic, to distrust that Horatian maxim, if -Si vis me flere, dolendum est Primùm ipsi tibi, Artificial stammerings, and blubberings and strugglings for breath, as if fighting against suffocation, are dangerous experiments, for they are in general merely tricks of the stage, open to discovery, and hardly to be ranked above the manual joke, of sawing a truncheon, that it may shiver with a stroke upon the shoulders of an under-actor, who manfully endures the blow because he saw the carpenter disarm the weapon. The author of these Essays is a critic, friendly to the stage, when he points out some general errors and offences against local propriety in the mass of our performers, which he sums up under the following charges of-Glancing at the boxesAdjusting the dress-Telling the audience their soliloquies— Wearing their hats in rooms, and.. Not wearing them in the open air. There is no denying that these faults are glaring, and demand correction: The glances at the boxes, and adjustments of the dress, are impertinent and unpardonably out of place. The mismanagement of soliloquies leaves offenders without excuse, now that they have both the precept of Mr. Hunt, and the example of Mr. Kemble, to instruct them in a better practice: As to their intolerable misapplication of hats, it is an indecorum, that exposes them to every body's censure; when they wear them in a gentleman's chamber, his footman should be called to kick them out of it; but when in |