One of the secrets of his own success, lay, undoubtedly, in his education, feeling, and judgment. It may be readily seen from Aaron Hill's rather elaborate criticism, that he was an actor who made "points;" "he could soften and slide over, with an elegant negligence, the improprieties of a part he acted; while, on the contrary, he could dwell with energy upon the beauties, as if he exerted a latent spirit, which he kept back for such an occasion, that he might alarm, awaken, and transport, in those places only which were worthy of his best exertions." This was really to depend on "points;" and was, perhaps, a defect in a player of whom it has been said, that he had learning to understand perfectly what it was his part to speak, and judgment to know how it agreed or disagreed with his character. The following, by Hill, is as graphic as anything in Cibber:--"Booth had a talent at discovering the passions, where they lay hid in some celebrated parts, by the injudicious practice of other actors; when he had discovered, he soon grew able to express them; and his secret of attaining this great lesson of the theatre, was an adaptation of his look to his voice, by which artful imitation of nature, the variations in the sounds of his words gave propriety to every change in his countenance. So that it was Mr. Booth's peculiar felicity to be heard and seen the same; whether as the pleased, the grieved, the pitying, the reproachful, or the angry. One would be almost tempted to borrow the aid of a very bold figure, and to express this excellency the more significantly, by permission to affirm, that _the Blind might have seen him in his voice, and the Deaf have heard him in his visage_." In his later years, says a critic, "his merit as an actor was unrivalled, and even so extraordinary, as to be almost beyond the reach of envy." His Othello, Cato, and his Polydore, in the "Orphan," in which he was never equalled, were long the theme of admiration to his survivors, as were in a less degree his sorrowing and not roaring Lear, his manly yet not blustering Hotspur. Dickey Brass and Dorimant, Wildair and Sir Charles Easy,[130] Pinchwife, Manley, and Young Bevil, were among the best of his essays in comedy,--where, however, he was surpassed by Wilks. "But then, I believe," says a critic, "no one will say he did not appear the fine gentleman in the character of Bevil, in the 'Conscious Lovers.' It is said that he _once_ played Falstaff in the presence of Queen Anne, 'to the delight of the whole audience.'"