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730 But justice may not partial trophies raise, Nor sink the actress' in the woman's praise. Still hand in hand her words and actions go, And the heart feels more than the features show; For, through the regions of that beauteous face We no variety of passions trace; Dead to the soft emotions of the heart, No kindred softness can those eyes impart: The brow, still fix'd in sorrow's sullen frame, Void of distinction, marks all parts the same. 740 What's a fine person, or a beauteous face, Unless deportment gives them decent grace? Bless'd with all other requisites to please, Some want the striking elegance of ease; The curious eye their awkward movement tires; They seem like puppets led about by wires. Others, like statues, in one posture still, Give great ideas of the workman's skill; Wond'ring, his art we praise the more we view, And only grieve he gave not motion too. 750 Weak of themselves are what we beauties call, It is the manner which gives strength to all; This teaches every beauty to unite, And brings them forward in the noblest light; Happy in this, behold, amidst the throng, With transient gleam of grace, Hart[60] sweeps along. If all the wonders of external grace, A person finely turn'd, a mould of face, Where—union rare—expression's lively force With beauty's softest magic holds discourse, 760 Attract the eye; if feelings, void of art, Rouse the quick passions, and inflame the heart; If music, sweetly breathing from the tongue, Captives the ear, Bride[61] must not pass unsung. When fear, which rank ill-nature terms conceit, By time and custom conquer'd, shall retreat; When judgment, tutor'd by experience sage, Shall shoot abroad, and gather strength from age; When Heaven, in mercy, shall the stage release From the dull slumbers of a still-life piece; 770 When some stale flower[62], disgraceful to the walk, Which long hath hung, though wither'd, on the stalk, Shall kindly drop, then Bride shall make her way, And merit find a passage to the day; Brought into action, she at once shall raise Her own renown, and justify our praise. Form'd for the tragic scene, to grace the stage With rival excellence of love and rage; Mistress of each soft art, with matchless skill To turn and wind the passions as she will; 780 To melt the heart with sympathetic woe, Awake the sigh, and teach the tear to flow; To put on frenzy's wild, distracted glare, And freeze the soul with horror and despair; With just desert enroll'd in endless fame, Conscious of worth superior, Cibber[63] came. When poor Alicia's madd'ning brains are rack'd, And strongly imaged griefs her mind distract, Struck with her grief, I catch the madness too, My brain turns round, the headless trunk I view! 790 The roof cracks, shakes, and falls—new horrors rise, And Reason buried in the ruin lies! Nobly disdainful of each slavish art, She makes her first attack upon the heart; Pleased with the summons, it receives her laws, And all is silence, sympathy, applause. But when, by fond ambition drawn aside, Giddy with praise, and puff'd with female pride, She quits the tragic scene, and, in pretence To comic merit, breaks down nature's fence, 800 I scarcely can believe my ears or eyes, Or find out Cibber through the dark disguise. Pritchard[64], by Nature for the stage design'd, In person graceful, and in sense refined; Her art as much as Nature's friend became, Her voice as free from blemish as her fame, Who knows so well in majesty to please, Attemper'd with the graceful charms of ease? When, Congreve's favoured pantomime[65] to grace, She comes a captive queen, of Moorish race; 810 When love, hate, jealousy, despair, and rage With wildest tumults in her breast engage, Still equal to herself is Zara seen; Her passions are the passions of a queen. When she to murder whets the timorous Thane,[66] I feel ambition rush through every vein; Persuasion hangs upon her daring tongue, My heart grows flint, and every nerve's new strung. In comedy—Nay, there, cries Critic, hold; Pritchard's for comedy too fat and old: 820 Who can, with patience, bear the gray coquette, Or force a laugh with over-grown Julett?[67] Her speech, look, action, humour, all are just, But then, her age and figure give disgust. Are foibles, then, and graces of the mind, In real life, to size or age confined? Do spirits flow, and is good-breeding placed In any set circumference of waist? As we grow old, doth affectation cease, Or gives not age new vigour to caprice? 830 If in originals these things appear, Why should we bar them in the copy here? The nice punctilio-mongers of this age, The grand minute reformers of the stage, Slaves to propriety of every kind, Some standard measure for each part should find, Which, when the best of actors shall exceed, Let it devolve to one of smaller breed. All actors, too, upon the back should bear Certificate of birth; time, when; place, where; 840 For how can critics rightly fix their worth, Unless they know the minute of their birth? An audience, too, deceived, may find, too late, That they have clapp'd an actor out of date. Figure, I own, at first may give offence, And harshly strike the eye's too curious sense; But when perfections of the mind break forth, Humour's chaste sallies, judgment's solid worth; When the pure genuine flame by Nature taught, Springs into sense and every action's thought; 850 Before such merit all objections fly— Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick's six feet high. Oft have I, Pritchard, seen thy wondrous skill, Confess'd thee great, but find thee greater still; That worth, which shone in scatter'd rays before, Collected now, breaks forth with double power. The 'Jealous Wife!'[68] on that thy trophies raise, Inferior only to the author's praise. From Dublin, famed in legends of romance For mighty magic of enchanted lance, 860 With which her heroes arm'd, victorious prove, And, like a flood, rush o'er the land of Love, Mossop and Barry came—names ne'er design'd By Fate in the same sentence to be join'd. Raised by the breath of popular acclaim, They mounted to the pinnacle of fame; There the weak brain, made giddy with the height, Spurr'd on the rival chiefs to mortal fight. Thus sportive boys, around some basin's brim, Behold the pipe-drawn bladders circling swim; 870 But if, from lungs more potent, there arise Two bubbles of a more than common size, Eager for honour, they for fight prepare, Bubble meets bubble, and both sink to air. Mossop[69] attach'd to military plan, Still kept his eye fix'd on his right-hand[70] man; Whilst the mouth measures words with seeming skill, The right hand labours, and the left lies still; For he, resolved on Scripture grounds to go, What the right doth, the left-hand shall not know, 880 With studied impropriety of speech, He soars beyond the hackney critic's reach; To epithets allots emphatic state, Whilst principals, ungraced, like lackeys wait; In ways first trodden by himself excels, And stands alone in indeclinables; Conjunction, preposition, adverb join To stamp new vigour on the nervous line; In monosyllables his thunders roll, He, she, it, and we, ye, they, fright the soul. 890 In person taller than the common size, Behold where Barry[71] draws admiring eyes! When labouring passions, in his bosom pent, Convulsive rage, and struggling heave for vent; Spectators, with imagined terrors warm, Anxious expect the bursting of the storm: But, all unfit in such a pile to dwell, His voice comes forth, like Echo from her cell, To swell the tempest needful aid denies, And all adown the stage in feeble murmurs dies. 900 What man, like Barry, with such pains, can err In elocution, action, character? What man could give, if Barry was not here, Such well applauded tenderness to Lear? Who else can speak so very, very fine, That sense may kindly end with every line? Some dozen lines before the ghost is there, Behold him for the solemn scene prepare: See how he frames his eyes, poises each limb, Puts the whole body into proper trim:—910 From whence we learn, with no great stretch of art, Five lines hence comes a ghost, and, ha! a start. When he appears most perfect, still we find Something which jars upon and hurts the mind: Whatever lights upon a part are thrown, We see too plainly they are not his own: No flame from Nature ever yet he caught, Nor knew a feeling which he was not taught: He raised his trophies on the base of art, And conn'd his passions, as he conn'd his part. 920 Quin,[72] from afar, lured by the scent of fame, A stage leviathan, put in his claim, Pupil of Betterton[73] and Booth. Alone, Sullen he walk'd, and deem'd the chair his own: For how should moderns, mushrooms of the day, Who ne'er those masters knew, know how to play? Gray-bearded veterans, who, with partial tongue, Extol the times when they themselves were young, Who, having lost all relish for the stage, See not their own defects, but lash the age, 930 Received, with joyful murmurs of applause, Their darling chief, and lined[74] his favourite cause. Far be it from the candid Muse to tread Insulting o'er the ashes of the dead: But, just to living merit, she maintains, And dares the test, whilst Garrick's genius reigns, Ancients in vain endeavour to excel, Happily praised, if they could act as well. But, though prescription's force we disallow, Nor to antiquity submissive bow; 940 Though we deny imaginary grace, Founded on accidents of time and place, Yet real worth of every growth shall bear Due praise; nor must we, Quin, forget thee there. His words bore sterling weight; nervous and strong, In manly tides of sense they roll'd along: Happy in art, he chiefly had pretence To keep up numbers, yet not forfeit sense; No actor ever greater heights could reach In all the labour'd artifice of
