LADY in her own person to talk to a mixed assembly of some thousand people.' We do not blame the historian of the stage for publishing all this stuff; he would have been inexcusable for omitting it; but surely the good people of London at that period must have had little to do to give themselves any trouble about the subject. We must be allowed to extract one observation, suggested by the first appearance of Mr. Holman :— "One advantage the actor may certainly derive from academic studies; he will learn to value himself, and prefer through life the associations of his youth. His habits will therefore rarely be low, and his conduct will for the most part support the dignity of the scholar and the gentleman. An actor who feels a pride that Oxford was a mother to him, will usually take care that she do not blush for her son." In the year 1785, Henderson and Sheridan gave those celebrated Readings at Freemason's Hall, which have been already adverted to. About the same time, Le Texier gratified the Public by his highly popular French Readings. "On the 25th, commenced at Freemasons' Hall an entertainment, which I have already alluded to, and which was attractive beyond parallel. I speak of Readings by Mr. Sheridan, senior, and Mr. Henderson. The grand room of that building literally overflowed on these nights. Sheridan, to most of his audience, was better known as a teacher of elocution than an actor; his books had established a reputation for accuracy, and although his system of pronunciation is now somewhat neglected, he will seldom be found without authority for what is deemed most capricious. The reader will excuse one instance in proof of this assertion. The word SATIETY, is commonly pronounced, I think, with the full power given to all the letters as they stand, and the accent on the letter i in the second syllable. Mr. Sheridan pronounced it as if written sassiety. In his justification, let me mention, that throughout the accurate and beautifully printed Homer of Chapman, 1616, this word is spelt and accented sacíety, which proves that this imagined innovation was actually the orthoepy of Shakspeare's age. Mr. Sheridan certainly selected his own readings rather as lessons of instruction than amusement. To Henderson was assigned the romantic, the pathetic, the gay, the humorous, and even the burlesque. His friend Caleb Whiteford gave him some suggestions; George Steevens probably more. kind and most affectionate admirer, the Rev. C. Este, was constantly at hand to be consulted, and no man better knew the taste of the public. Then a young man, I had myself the pleasure, at his request, to run through the volumes of the Poetical Calendar of Fawkes and Woty, in the search of graceful levities for this great object. Had he lived, there can be no doubt he would have converted this, his peculiar excellence, into a source of annual emolument, greatly exceeding that derived from the theatre. What that equally astonishing person, Le Texier, did by French readings in Lisle Street, His Mr. Henderson would soon have found practicable to do in English; nor needed he to have restricted himself to the season of Lent for such exertions. A residence better suited than his actual house in Buckingham Street, and a subscription for a course of a limited number of nights, would have settled the success, beyond the resisting power of the patentees, who now, at all events, allow every sort of innovation upon their prerogatives. He "Le Texier was at this time attended by a very fashionable circle, at his house in Lisle Street, Leicester Square. My younger readers may thank me for some description of the place and the performance. The whole wore the appearance of an amusement in a private house. On ascending the great staircase, you were received in M. le Texier's library, and from that instant you seemed to be so incontestibly in France (as Sterne has it) that the very fuel was wood, and burnt upon dogs instead of the English grate. You then passed into the reading room, and met a dressed and refined party, who treated him as their host invariably. His servants brought you tea and coffee, in the interval between the readings, silently and respectfully. Le Texier, too, himself, came into the library, at such pauses, and saluted his more immediate acquaintance. A small bell announced that the readings were about to commence. He was usually rather elegant in his dress; his countenance was handsome, and his features flexible to, every shade of discrimination. Le Texier sat at a small desk with lights, and began the reading immediately upon his entrance. read chiefly Moliere, and the petites pieces of the French Theatre; but how he read them as he did, as it astonished Voltaire, La Harpe, and Marmontel, so it may reasonably excite my lasting wonder. He marked his various characters by his countenance, even before he spoke, and shifted from one to the other without the slightest difficulty, or possibility of mistake. In Paris, he had at first even changed the dress of the characters rapidly, but still sufficiently: this to our taste was pantomimic, and below him. "He had that within which passeth shew," a power of seizing all the fleeting indications of character, and "with a learned spirit of human dealing," placing them in an instant before you, as distinct as individual nature, as various as the great mass of society. He did all this, too, without seeming effort; it was, in somewhat of a different acceptation, a play both to him and to his audience. There was no noise; little or no action; a wafture of the hands to one side indicated the exit of the person. I cannot assign a preference to the reading of any one character in the piece; they all equally partook of his feeling or his humour. To my judgment, he was as true in the delicacy of the timid virgin, as in the grossest features of the bourgeois gentil-homme. I will venture to say, that no intelligent visitor of Le Texier can think differently of his astonishing talents." "Such were the two great readers of the time. Le Texier was, I think, essentially dramatic in his reading. I have heard him read passages from De Lisle, and other modern didactic or epistolary poets; but he required the dramatic form of composition to show the extent of his powers. Henderson was not at all confined. From the prophetic writings in the Old Testament, to the humble prose of Dodsley's Esop, he read in a way so masterly, as to be literally beyond even a partial rivalry. As, to use his own phrase, he had never studied under any Demosthenes maker,' it can only be said, that the quality of his attention as a reader must have exceeded that of other men; that his taste was surer, and his organs more flexible than theirs. All other readers in my time have wanted diversity: they palled upon the ear. These two alone had the power to fascinate with excellence even beyond the stage itself-because the whole of the characters in a drama were in this way exhibited with equal force of talent, which can never happen in any company of actors upon the stage. Two or three parts there will be finely sustained, and the rest thrown away.* *. The revival of Whitehead's Tragedy of the Roman Father, gave occasion for the last display of the genius of Henderson. "This play opened to Mr. Henderson, in Horatius, one of the most transcendant efforts of genius that the stage has ever given. It is in the second scene of the 3rd act, and the passage is that where Valeria relates the flight of Publius before the three champions of Alba: "Valeria. What could he do, my lord, when THREE Oppos'd him? Horatius. He might have died! O villain! villain! villain !' "' "Henderson saw, that, if he spoke Whitehead's line as it stood, the patriot passion itself died for want of expressive diction; with the finest tact, therefore, he dropt the heavy translation of Corneille's 'Qu'il mourut!' and burst out with the monosyllable "die!" uttered with terrific energy. The effect was to transfix the hearer, till a few seconds enabled him to thunder down an applause of the genuine kind, such as is at once felt to be the estimate and the reward of genius. The friends of this great actor, as it will be readily imagined, did not let so favourable an incident escape them. They gave their opinion its full weight with Mr. Harris, who had occasionally, they thought, discovered symptoms of alienation from this the greatest actor of his theatre. But alas! all their efforts were rendered abortive by an event entirely unlooked for, the almost sudden death of Mr. Henderson, on the 25th of the following month, November." "He had not completed the 39th year of his age, and yet had long been a perfect master in his art, the range of which he carried to an extent, that seems hopeless to succeeding actors. 'I will not,' said Mr. Kemble once to me, speak of Henderson's Falstaff; every body can say how rich and voluptuous it was: but I will say, that his Shy. lock was the greatest effort that I ever witnessed on the stage.' 'I remember it in its principal scenes, and I have no doubt whatever that * We cannot imagine an amusement more delightful, elegant, and intellectual, than such readings present. The charm of animated and graceful elocution gives them a decided preference over the dry perusal of an author, while, by the exclusion of stage decoration, the attention is preserved from wandering to adventitious accompaniments. They may be enjoyed, also, without a possibility of the contamination incidental to a theatre. The only entertainments of this nature in our day are the SHAKSPEARIAN Readings occasionally given during some years past by Mr. Smart, at his residence in Leicester-Square, where they have been numerously and fashionably attended. 6 it fully merited so high a praise; but I respectfully insinuate, that Macklin in the trial scene was superior to him and all men. Yet it may be proper here to say, that in many of his characters Henderson's superiority may be disputed; but that his performance of Falstaff is as much above all competition, as the character itself transcends all that was ever thought comic in man. The cause of this pre-eminence was purely mental-he understood it better in its diversity of powers-bis imagination was congenial; the images seemed coined in the brain of the actor; they sparkled in his eye, before the tongue supplied them with language. I saw him act the character in the second part of Henry IV., where it is more metaphysical, and consequently less powerful. He could not supply the want of active dilemmas, such as exhilarate the Falstaff of the first part, but it was equally perfect in conception and execution. I have already described his Falstaff at Windsor, which completed this astonishing creation of the poet." Henderson was buried in Westminster Abbey. We cannot refrain from expressing a hope that the observation with which Mr. Boaden concludes may have its effect in the proper quarter, and produce the abolition of a practice, which is a national disgrace. : "I WRITE, WITH SUITABLE INDIGNATION, THAT NOW. MONEY MUST BE PAID FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF APPROACHING HIS GRAVE, AND THE COMMONS OF GREAT BRITAIN DOUBT WHETHER THEY HAVE THE POWER TO DRIVE THE MONEY CHANGERS OUT OF THE TEMPLE!" The death of Henderson left Kemble without a rival. His own indisputable claims, and the decease or secession of other performers, put him into possession of many new parts; and while he extended the list of his characters, he increased his professional reputation. In 1787 he married the widow of Mr. Brereton, and in 1788 became manager of Drury-Lane. Among the early acts of his reign, was the revival of Shakespeare's Henry the Eighth. We feel somewhat disappointed that Mr. Boaden should pass over so slightly Mrs. Siddons's Queen Katherine, a performance, exhibiting almost the perfection of the histrionic art. A Comedy, altered from the Spanish, by Bickerstaff, was cut down into an afterpiece by the manager, and produced under the title of "The Pannel;" and among the characters which, in the course of the season, he assumed, was that of Coriolanus, with which he afterwards so completely identified himself. The retirement of Macklin from the stage, introduces some anecdotes of that extraordinary man. "As I paid much attention to Macklin's performances, and personally knew him, I shall endeavour to characterize bis acting, and discriminate it from that of others. If Macklin really was of the old school that school tanght what was truth and nature. His acting was essen fially manly, there was nothing of trick about it. His delivery was more level than modern speaking, but certainly more weighty, direct, and emphatic." "Macklin once disputed with me upon the Paradise Lost, when he took a sentence of exclamation for a simple interrogatory; but where, in reading Milton, he gave only what long habit had settled upon his organs, without any recent effort of the understanding, he proved how minutely he could once enquire into meaning, and how forcibly and even beautifully he could render his conceptions. In reciting the exordium of the Paradise Lost, there was a masterly instance of his feeling and propriety, in a slight suspension of the voice before he uttered the word forbidden; and the latter syllables rather lingered out, despondingly, 'Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit "The awful regret, which trembled upon the word, formed the suitable forerunner to the great amiss'" 'Whose mortal taste Brought DEATH into the world, and ALL our wOE.' "It has been commonly considered that Garrick introduced a mighty change in stage delivery: that actors had never, until his time, been natural. If Macklin at all resembled his masters, as it is probable he did, they can certainly not be obnoxious to a censure of this kind. He abhorred all trick, all start and ingenious attitude; and his attacks upon Mr. Garrick were always directed to the restless abundance of his action and his gestures, by which, he said, rather than by the fair business of the character, he caught and detained all attention to himself." Mr. Boaden is wrong in supposing that Macklin "was of the old school," and resembled his masters." On the contrary, he is represented as being the first who introduced a natural method of speaking upon the stage. Garrick, with greater physical advantages, but probably with less judgment, followed. Inasmuch as Macklin's delivery was more level than modern speaking, we conceive it to have been better. We must observe also, with reference to his opinion of Garrick, that we are inclined to charge almost all the performers we have ever seen, with exhibiting a redundancy of action. It is one of the most common, of stage vices. The discrimination displayed in the following critical illustration is deserving of attention. "I took that opportunity to observe upon the elegant, but somewhat painful, attitude into which most Hamlets throw themselves, upon the appearance of the ghost.-Sir, it is unnatural, and a mere stage trick.' Upon being requested to show me, how HE in Hamlet would first receive the spirit of his father? He said, 'Remember, sir, to give VOL. II. PART II. E E |