It was long the custom to compare the French actor Lekain with Garrick. The two had little in common, except in their resolution to tread the stage and achieve reputation by it. Lekain was born in 1729, the year in which Baron departed the stage. He was the son of a goldsmith, and had gained wide notice as a maker of delicate surgical instruments, when a passion for the stage led him, as in Garrick's case, to playing frequently in private, especially in Voltaire's little theatre, in the Rue Traversière, now known as the Rue Fontaine Molière. On this stage Lekain exhibited great powers, with defects, which were considered incurable; but he was only twenty years of age, and he could then move, touch, and attract the coldest of audiences. Voice, features, and figure were against him, and yet ladies praised the beauty of all, so cunning was the artist. He played Orosmane, in "Zaire," before Louis XV., and the King was angry to find that the actor could _compel_ him to weep! When Voltaire first heard him, he threw his arms round Lekain, and thanked God for creating a being who could delight Voltaire by uttering bad verses! And yet Voltaire dissuaded him from taking to the stage; but when Voltaire saw in him the hero of his own tragedies, then poet and player lived but for one another, thought themselves France, and that the eyes of the world were upon them. Voltaire addressed Lekain as "Monsieur le Garrick of France, in merit though not in purse!" and as "My very dear and very great support of _expiring tragedy_!" When he wrote this in 1770, there was a boy seven years old in Paris, who, seventeen years later, began the most splendid career ever run by French actor,--as Seïde, in Voltaire's "Mahomet,"--Talma! Garrick and Lekain equally respected the original text of an author; but the former, more readily than the latter, adopted so-called "emendations." When Marmontel _improved_ the bold phrases of old Rotrou's "Venceslas," Lekain repeated the improvements at rehearsal, but at night he kept to the original passages of the author, and thus created confusion among his fellow-actors, who lost their _cues_. In this, Garrick deemed him unjustifiable.