The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 2, February 1810Arnold, Samuel James
History
The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 2, February 1810
Arnold, Samuel James
Drama -- Periodicals; Theater -- Periodicals
out the particular beauties it affects to admire, accomplishes its will
by a sweeping wholesale term of comparison, more injurious to him they
praise than to him they slight. Nay, so far has this been carried, that
some who never were out of the limits of this union have, by a kind of
telescopical discernment, viewed Cooke and Kemble in comparison with
their new favourite, and found them quite deficient. We cannot readily
forget one circumstance: a person said to another in our hearing at the
playhouse, "You have been in England, sir, don't you think Master Payne
superior to young Betty?" "I don't know, sir, having never seen Master
Betty," answered the man; "I think he is very much superior," replied
the former--"You have seen Master Betty then, sir," said the latter;
"No, I never did," returned he that asked the first question, "but I am
sure of it--I have heard a person that was in England say so!!"--This
was the pure effusion of a mind subdued to prostration by wonder. In
England this was carried to such lengths, that the panegyrists of young
Betty seemed to vie with each other in fanatical admiration of that
truly extraordinary boy. One, in a public print, went so far as to
assert, that Mr. Fox (who, as well as Mr. Pitt, was at young Betty's
benefit when he played Hamlet) declared the performance was little, if
at all, inferior to that of his deceased friend Garrick. With the very
same breath in which we read the paragraph we declared it to be a
falsehood. Mr. Fox had too much judgment to institute the
comparison--Mr. Fox had too much benignity to utter such a malicious
libel upon that noble boy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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