 voice and gesture, as is no where to be observed but on the
stage. To illustrate this assertion, he availed himself of his talent, and
mimicked the manner and voice of all the principal performers, male and female,
belonging to the French comedy; to the admiration of the chevalier, who having
complimented him upon this surprising modulation, begged leave to dissent in
some particulars from the opinion he had avowed. »That you have good actors in
England, (said he) it would be unjust and absurd in me to deny; your theatre is
adorned by one woman, whose sensibility and sweetness of voice is such as I have
never observed on any other stage; she has, besides, an elegance of person and
expression of features, that wonderfully adapt her for the most engaging
characters of your best plays; and I must freely own that I have been as highly
delighted, and as deeply affected, by a Monimia and Belvidera at London, as ever
I was by a Cornelia and Cleopatra at Paris. You can, moreover, boast of several
comic actors who are perfect masters of buffoonery and grimace; though, to be
free with you, I think, in these qualifications you are excelled by the players
of Amsterdam: neither are you destitute of those, who, with a good deal of
cultivation, might acquire some degree of excellence in the representation of
tragic characters: but I shall never cease to wonder that the English, who are
certainly a sensible and discerning people, should be so much infatuated, as to
applaud and caress with the most extravagant approbation, not to say adoration
and regard, one or two graciosos, who, I will be bold to say, would scarce be
able to earn their bread by their talents, on any other theatre under the sun. I
have seen one of these, in the celebrated part of Richard the third, which, I
believe, is not a character of ridicule, sollicit and triumph in the laugh of
the audience, during the best part of a scene in which the author has
represented that prince as an object of abhorrence. I have observed the same
person in the character of Hamlet, shake his fist with all the demonstrations of
wrath at his mistress, for no evident cause, and behave like a ruffian to his
own mother. Shocked at such want of dignity and decorum in a prince, who seemed
the favourite of the people, I condemned the genius that produced him, but, upon
a second perusal of the play, transferred my censure to the actor, who, in my
opinion, had egregiously mistaken the meaning
