The difference of the present race of actors from those I remember, seems to be, that less study is found necessary for the profession than was formerly judged to be requisite. Parsons and Dodd must have _thought_ a good deal before they could have matured such exhibitions as their _Foresight_ and _Aguecheek_. We do not want capable actors, but their end is answered with less pains. The way is to get a kind of familiarity with the audience, to strike up a kind of personal friendship, to be "hail fellow, well met," with them: those excellent comedians, Bannister and Dowton, who had least need of these arts, have not disdained to use them. You see a reciprocity of greeting and goodwill between them and the house at first entrance. It is amazing how much carelessness of acting slips in by this intercourse. After all, it is a good-natured fault, and a great many kindly feelings are generated in the galleries by this process, feelings which are better than criticism.--Russell's _Jerry Sneak_ appears to me to be a piece of the richest colouring we have on the present stage in the comic line, if, indeed, it be entirely comic, for its effect on me, in some passages, is even pathetic. The innocent, good-natured tones with which _Sneak_ makes his ineffectual appeals to the sympathy of the hard-hearted and contemptuous betrayer of his honour, the _Major_; the slight dash of idiotism which the Actor contrives to throw into the part, (which Foote, I will venture to say, never dreamt of), but yet which has the happiest effect in turning what would be _contempt_, an ill-natured and heart-injuring passion, into _pity_ and _compassion_; are some of the nicest effects of observation, and tend to unvulgarize the part, if I may be allowed the expression.--For a piece of pure drollery, Liston's _Lord Grizzle_ has no competitor. Comedy it is not, nor farce. It is neither nature, nor exaggerated nature. It is a creation of the actor's own. _Grizzle_ seems a being of another world, such an one as _Nicolaus Klimius_ might have seen at the fantastic courts of his _World under the Ground_. It is an abstract idea of court qualities,--an apotheosis of apathy. Ben Jonson's abstractions of courtiers in his _Cynthia's Revels_ and _Every Man out of his Humour_, what a treat it would be to see them on the stage done in the same manner!--What I most despair of is, seeing again a succession of such actresses as Mrs. Mattocks, Miss Pope, and Mrs. Jordan. This coquetting between the performer and the public is carried to a shocking excess by some of the Ladies who play the first characters in what is called genteel comedy. Instead of playing their pretty airs upon their lover on the stage, as Mrs. Abingdon or Mrs. Cibber were [was] content to do, or Mrs. Oldfield before them, their whole artillery of charms is now directed to ensnare--whom?--why, the whole audience--a thousand gentlemen, perhaps--for this many-headed