LETTER XVI.

TO PHILETHES.

OND as I am PHILETHES, of

the Entertainment of the Theatre, believe me I have lately received an Addition to this favourite Pleasure, and fuch a one as you would have participated in very greatly with me. This was no less than a total Victory over that inveterate Prejudice of our old Acquaintance MILOTOs, who (like the old Debauchée in GIL BLAS that thought the Works even of Nature daily decay'd) has fo frequently maintained that the Faculties of Mankind are much inferior to what they were in the laft Generation. The old Gentleman, you know, till this Winter, has not been in Town thefe twenty Years, and confequently totally: ignorant of the last Restoration of Nature in the Representation of Tragedy. When I mentioned my defire of waiting on him H 2

to

to the Play, he affented to my Proposal with his usual Chearfulness, but at the fame time spoke with wonderful Rapture of BETTERTON, POWELL and VERBRUGGEN, and feemed to infinuate, that he fhould neceffarily triumph in the Superiority of his Contemporaries over the modern Heroes of the Bufkin. But judge what was my Satisfaction after the Play was over at his Pleasurable Disappointment, when he ingenuously confefs'd, that GARRICK was not only the best Actor he ever faw, but even exceeded the utmost Conceptions he had formed of Theatrical Excellence. It has been a peculiar Misfortune in the Representation of Modern Tragedy, that the Subjects of it, by being moftly royal Perfonages, were removed by their Rank from the common Obfervation of Mankind; fo that our first Players, being totally unacquainted with the Characters, perhaps notably imagined that Princes were of a fuperior Species to their Subjects, and therefore as BAYS made his Spirits talk unintelligibly, they thought their imaginary Heroes

(which they had as little Conception of as the Rehearsal Poet had of aërial Beings) fhould mouth every Sentence inarticulately. The Generality of Audiences are no more converfant with the Originals than the Players themselves; fo they took this preternatural Way of speaking as infeparable from the Character of Majefty, till by Degrees, as PRIOR obferves upon another Occafion,

"Cuftom confirm'd what Fancy had begun."

and the deep-toned Monotomy became the folemn Manner of Speaking Tragedy. This was the Situation in which this great Genius found the Stage about fourteen Years ago, who, being bleft with every internal and external Qualification for reprefenting human kind in all its Subordinations; having, on the one hand, a found Judgment, an elegant Tafte, a lively Fancy, with the most penetrating difcernment into the inmost Receffes of the Heart; and, on the other, an Expreffive Countenance, an Eye full of Luftre, a fine Ear, a most mufical

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mufical and articulate Voice, with an uncommon Power to modulate it with eafe to every Tranfition of Paffion, he reftored Nature to her loft Empire upon the Stage, and taught us by the Conviction of our sympathizing Souls, that Kings themselves were Men, and felt like the reft of their Species. From a Line in HORACE's Epiftle to AUGUSTUS, I am inclinable to think that Roscius was among the Romans what GARRICK is among us, and that QUIN likewife in Contradiftinction may be confidered as the Modern Esopus.

Quæ gravis lopus, quæ doctus Roscius egit.

In this place the Epithet doctus contrafted to gravis, the deep Cadence of ESOP, means that Roscius was fkilful in the Tranfition from one Paffion to another, and had a wonderful Happinefs in accommodating himself to a Variety of Characters in Tragedy; whereas ESOPUS was fuited only, by his fonorous full Voice and graver Action, to one particular Species of

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Characters. The Epithet gravis, applied to Æsopus, has led the Commentators into a Miftake concerning the Talents of RosCIUS: they imagine, because the one is called the deep-cadenc'd Actor, that the other in Contradiftinction must have been only an Actor of Comedies. Their Authority for fuch a Suppofition feems to be this Sentence of QUINCTILIAN. Roscius citatior, SOPUS gravior, quod ille comædias, bic tragedias egit *. But QUINCTILIAN, confidering the diftance of Time he lived in from these famous Players, might poffibly know as little of the Matter as themfelves; but that they were both mistaken in this Point may be collected from TULLY, their Cotemporary, who celebrates his inimitable Action as a Tragic Player in the third Book De Oratore, as he had occafionally inftanc'd him, in the preceding Books upon the fame Subject, as the faultlefs Pattern for the Representation of human Nature in its comic Moods. So