The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810
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The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810
Drama -- Periodicals; Theater -- Periodicals
While I admire in Barry the quick conception, the strong expression, and
the fine taste of Julio Romano; while I hang upon the expression of his
eyes, when tenderness is the passion to be described by them, and while
in the several parts of a history, or through the varied scenes of an
interesting tragedy, I am at once surprised and charmed with the choice
of attitudes in both, I cannot be blind to the defects that stain as
well the painting as the scene: there was always what the judges call a
dryness, a hardness in the painter, and the same foible now and then
discloses itself in the less guarded moments of the player: neither the
one nor the other seem to have been perfect masters of the doctrine of
lights and shadows, and both are therefore sometimes extravagant, and
not always graceful: this happy difference, however, appears between
them, that while the arrogance of the painter esteemed his faults as
excellencies, the player, equally capable of giving advice to himself,
and of receiving it from others, will soon scandalize all criticism by
annihilating the foibles that gave it origin.
The genius, the soul of Titian, is revived in Garrick; both give us not
resemblances, but realities: they do not represent but create, upon the
canvass or upon the scene; and what from others we would admire as
representations, we read in these as actions. There is in the
performance of this player, all the delicacy of taste, and all the
dignity of expression that we reverence in the painter: his figures,
where the subject gives him scope, are noble almost beyond imagination,
his attitudes the most strictly appropriated to the sensations that
inspire them, and his colouring, to borrow a metaphor from the sister
art to express an excellence for which the other has yet no word of its
own, is the greatest that we ever did or ever must expect to see. With
all the sweetness and delicacy of his imagery, there is a glow of fire
and freedom that at once surprises and charms his audience, and, like
his brother artist, he excels all men who have ever been eminent, in the
peculiar distinguishing touches which separate passion from passion; and
thence give at once the greatest spirit and the strictest truth to the
representation. I shall hardly venture to affirm that there is no foible
in any of the pieces given us by either of these artists; but there is a
blaze of majesty and beauty, throughout the works of both, that at once
engages the whole eye, and with its superior lustre dims what may be
less worthy praise till it becomes indiscernible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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