An English audience loves show, bustle and incident, in their tragedies; and have a mortal aversion to long dialogues and speeches, however fine the sentiments, and however beautiful the language may be. In this it would seem, that the two nations had changed characters. Perhaps it would be difficult to account for it in a satisfactory manner. I shall not attempt it. A Frenchman would cut the matter short, by saying, that the Paris audience has a more correct and just taste than that of London; that the one could be amused and delighted with poetry and sentiment, while the other could not be kept awake without bustle, guards, processions, trumpets, fighting, and murder. For my own part, I admire the French Melpomene more in the closet than on the stage. I cannot be reconciled to the French actors of tragedy. Their pompous manner of declaiming seems to me very unnatural. The strut, and superb gestures, and what they call la manière noble, of their boasted Le Kain, appear, in my eyes, a little outrè. The justness, the dignified simplicity, the energy of Garrick’s action, have destroyed my relish for any manner different from his. That exquisite, but concealed art, that magic power, by which he could melt, freeze, terrify the soul, and command the obedient passions as he pleased, we look for in vain, upon our own, or any other stage. What Horace said of Nature, may be applied with equal justice to that unrivalled actor: ——Juvat, aut impellit ad iram, Aut ad humum mœrore gravi deducit, et angit. One of the most difficult things in acting is the player’s concealing himself behind the character he assumes: The instant the spectator gets a peep of him, the whole illusion vanishes, and the pleasure is succeeded by disgust. In Oedipus, Mahomet, and Orosmane, I have always detected Le Kain; but I have seen the English Roscius represent Hamlet, Lear, Richard, without recollecting that there was such a person as David Garrick in the world. The French tragedians are apt in my opinion _to overstep the modesty of nature_. Nature is not the criterion by which their merit is to be tried.—The audience measures them by a more sublime standard, and if they come not up to that, they cannot pass muster. Natural action, and a natural elocution, they seem to think incompatible with dignity, and imagine that the hero must announce the greatness of his soul by supercilious looks, haughty gestures, and a hollow sounding voice. Such easy familiar dialogue as Hamlet holds with his old school-fellow Horatio, appears to them low, vulgar, and inconsistent with the dignity of tragedy. But if simplicity of manners be not inconsistent in real life, with genius, and the most exalted greatness of mind, I do not see why the actor who represents a hero, should assume gestures which we have no reason to think were ever in use in any age, or among any rank of men.