ing only suffered? But I am interrupted by the pleasantest scene of anger and the disappointment of it that I have ever known, which happened while I was yet writing, and I overheard as I sat in a back room at a French bookseller's. There came into the shop a very learned man with an erect solemn air, and though a person of great parts otherwise, slow in understanding any thing which makes against himself. The composure of the faulty man, and the whimsical perplexity of him that was justly angry, is perfectly new. After turning over many volumes, said the seller to the buyer, "Sir, you know I have long asked you to send me back the first volume of French Sermons I formerly lent you."-" Sir," said the chapman, "I have often looked for it, but cannot find it; it is certainly lost, and I know not to whom I lent it, it is so many years ago."-" Then, Sir, here is the other volume, I'll send you home that, and please to pay for both."-" My friend," replied he, "can'st thou be so senseless as not to know that one volume is as imperfect in my library as your shop?"-" Yes, Sir, but it is you have lost the first volume, and, to be short, I will be paid."-" Sir, answered the chapman, "you are a young man, your book is lost, and learn by this little loss to bear much greater adversities, which you must expect to meet with."-"Yes, Sir, I'll bear when I must, but I have not lost now, for I say you have it and shall pay me."-" Friend, you grow warm, I tell you the book is lost, and I foresee in the course even of a prosperous life, that you will meet afflictions to make you mad, if you cannot bear this trifle."-" Sir, there is in this case no need of bearing, for you have the book."-" I say, Sir, I have not the book. But your passion will not let you hear enough to be informed that I have it not. Learn resignation of yourself to the distresses of this life: nay do not fret and fume, it is my duty to tell you that you are of an impatient spirit, and an impatient spirit is never without

woe."-" Was ever any thing like this?"" Yes, Sir, there have been many things like this. The loss is but a trifle, but your temper is wanton, and incapable of the least pain; therefore let me advise you, be patient, the book is lost, but do not you for that reason lose yourself." T.

PRONUNCIATION AND ACTION.

Format enim Natura prius non intus ad omnem Fortunarum habitum; juvat, aut impellit ad iram,

Aut ad humum mærore gravi deducit et angit;
Post effert animi motus interprete lingua.
HOR. Ars. Poet. v. 108.

For Nature forms and softens us within,
And writes our fortune's changes in our face:
Pleasure enchants, impetuous rage transports,
And grief dejects, and wrings the tortur'd soul;
And these are all interpreted by speech.

ROSCOMMON.

ICERO concludes his celebrated books de Ora

CIC

tore with some precepts for pronunciation and action, without which part he affirms that the best orator in the world can never succeed; and an indifferent one, who is master of this, shall gain much greater applause. What could make a stronger impression, says he, than those exclamations of Gracchus, “Whither shall I turn? Wretch that I am! to what place betake myself? Shall I go to the Capitol? Alas! it is overflowed with my brother's blood. Or shall I retire to my house? Yet there I behold my mother plunged in misery, weeping and despairing!" These breaks and turns of passion, it seems, were so enforced by the eyes, voice, and gesture of the speaker, that his very enemies could not refrain from tears. I insist, says Tully, upon this the rather, because our orators,

who are as it were actors of the truth itself, have quit. ted this manner of speaking; and the players, who are but the imitators of truth, have taken it up.

I shall therefore pursue the hint he has here given me, and for the service of the British stage I shall copy some of the rules which this great Roman master has laid down; yet, without confining myself wholly to his thoughts or words; and to adapt this essay the more to the purpose for which I intend it, instead of the examples he has inserted in this discourse, out of the ancient tragedies, I shall make use of parallel passages out of the most celebrated of our own.

The design of art is to assist action as much as possible in the representation of nature; for the appearance of reality is that which moves us in all repreзentations, and these have always the greater force, the nearer they approach to nature, and the less they show of imitation.

Nature herself has assigned, to every emotion of the soul, its peculiar cast of the countenance, tone of voice, and manner of gesture; and the whole person, all the features of the face and tones of the voice, answer, like strings upon musical instruments, to the impressions made on them by the mind. Thus the sounds of the voice, according to the various touches which raise them, form themselves into an acute or grave, quick or slow, loud or soft tone. These too may be subdivided into various kinds of tones, as the gentle, the rough, the contracted, the diffuse, the continued, the intermitted, the broken, abrupt, winding, softened, or elevated. Every one of these may be employed with art and judgment: and all supply the actor, as colours do the painter, with an expressive variety.

Anger exerts its peculiar voice in an acute, raised, and hurrying sound. The passionate character of King Lear, as it is admirably drawn by Shakspeare, abounds with the strongest instances of this kind.

Fiery!what quality?why Gloster! Gloster! I'd speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife. Are they inform'd of this? my breath and blood! Fiery? the fiery duke?"&c.

Sorrow and complaint demand a voice quite diffe. rent, flexible, slow, interrupted, and modulated in a mournful tone; as in that pathetical soliloquy of Cardinal Wolsey on his fall.

"Farewell!-a long farewell to all my greatness!
This is the state of man!-to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him,
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls as I do."

We have likewise a fine example of this in the whole part of Andromache in the Distrest Mother, particularly in these lines:

"I'll go, and in the anguish of my heart

Weep o'er my child-If he must die, my life
Is wrapt in his, I shall not long survive.
'Tis for his sake that I have suffer'd life,
Groan'd in captivity, and out-liv'd Hector.
Yes, my Astyanax, we'll go together!
Together to the realms of night we'll go :
There to thy ravish'd eyes thy sire I'll show,
And point him out among the shades below."

Fear expresses itself in a low, hesitating, and abject sound. If the reader considers the following speech of Lady Macbeth, while her husband is about the murder of Duncan and his grooms, he will imagine her even affrighted with the sound of her own voice while she is speaking it.

"Alas! I am afraid they have awak'd,

And 'tis not done; th attempt, and not the deed, Confounds us-Hark !—I laid the daggers ready, He could not miss them. Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done it."

Courage assumes a louder tone, as in that speech of Don Sebastian.

"Here satiate all your fury;

Let fortune empty her whole quiver on me,
I have a soul that like an ample shield

Can take in all, and verge enough for more."

Pleasure dissolves into a luxurious, mild, tender, and joyous modulation; as in the following lines of Caius Marius.

"Lavinia! O there's music in the name,

That soft'ning me to infant tenderness,

Makes my heart spring, like the first leaps of life."

And perplexity is different from all these; grave, but not bemoaning, with an earnest uniform sound of voice; as in that celebrated speech of Hamlet.

"To be, or not to be?—that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The stings and arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ach, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep-

To sleep! perchance to dream! Ay, there's the rub.
For in that sleep of death what dreains may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause- -There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,