The recitation was also accounted of high importance, so that the player who articulated took prodigious pains to improve his voice, and an almost whimsical care to preserve it(625). Nearly a third part of Dubos’ once celebrated work on Poetry and Painting, is occupied with the theatric declamation of the Roman actors. The art of framing the declamation of dramatic pieces was, he informs us, the object of a particular study, and indeed profession, at Rome. It was composed and signified in notes, placed over each verse of the play, to direct the tones and inflection of voice which were to be observed in recitation. There were a certain number of accents in the Latin language, and the composer of a declamation marked each syllable requiring to be accented, the grave or the acute accent which properly belonged to it, while on the remaining syllables, he noted, by means of conventional marks, a tone conformable to the tenor of the discourse. The declamation was thus not a musical song, but a recitation subject to the direction of a noted melody. Tragic declamation was graver and more harmonious than comic, but even the comic was more musical and varied than the pronunciation used in ordinary conversation(626). This system, it might be supposed, would have deprived the actors of much natural fire and enthusiasm, from the constraint to which they were thus subjected; but the whole dramatic system of the ancients was more artificial than ours, and something determinate and previously arranged, as to quantities and pauses, was perhaps essential to enable the gesticulating actor to move in proper concert with the reciter. The whole system, however, of noted declamation, is denied by Duclos and Racine, who think it impossible that accentuated tones of passion could be devised or employed(627). Both the actor who declaimed, and he who gesticulated, wore _masks_; and, before concluding the subject of the Roman theatre, it may not be improper to say a few words concerning this singular dramatic contrivance, as also concerning the attire of the performers. From the opportunity which they so readily afforded, of personally satirizing individuals, by representing a caricatured resemblance of their features, masks were first used in the old Greek comedy, which assumed the liberty of characterizing living citizens of Athens. It is most probable, however, that the hint of dramatic masks was given to the Romans by the Etruscans(628). That they were employed by the histrions of that latter nation, can admit of no doubt. The actors represented on the Etruscan vases are all masked, and have caps on their heads(629). We also know, that in some of the satirical exhibitions of the ancient Italians, they wore masks made of wood: “Nec non Ausonii, Trojâ gens missa, coloni Versibus incomptis ludunt, risuque soluto Oraque corticibus sumunt horrenda cavatis(630).”