It is especially incumbent on an artist, not to rest satisfied with having pleased: he should, from his knowledge of the grounds of his art, be able to tell himself why he has pleased; and thus by building upon solid principles, preferably to mere lucky hits, or to transient and accidental advantages of form or manner, insure the permanency of his power to please.
There is a vice in dancing, against which pupils cannot be too carefully
guarded; it is that of affectation. It is essentially different from that desire of pleasing, which is so natural and so consistent even with the greatest modesty, in that it always builds on some falsity, mistaken for a means of pleasing, though nothing can more surely defeat that intention; there is not an axiom more true than that the graces are incompatible with affectation. They vanish at the first appearance of it: and the curse of affectation is, that it never but lets itself be seen, and wherever it is seen, it is sure to offend, and to frustrate its own design.
The simplicity of nature is the great fountain of all the graces; from which they flow spontaneous, when unchecked by affectation, which at once poisons and dries them up.
Nature does not refuse cultivation, but she will not bear being forced. The great art of the dancing-master is not to give graces, for that is impossible, but to call forth into a nobly modest display those latent ones in his scholars, which may have been buried for want of opportunities or of education to break forth in their native lustre, or which have been spoiled or perverted, by wrong instruction, or by bad models of imitations. In this last case, the master’s business is rather to extirpate than to plant; to clear the ground of poisonous exotics, and to make way for the pleasing productions of nature.
This admirable prerogative of pleasing, inseparable from the natural graces, unpoisoned by affectation, is in nothing more strongly exemplified,
than in the rural dances, where simplicity of manners, a sprightly ease, and an exemption from all design but that of innocent mirth, give to the young and handsome villagers, or country-maids, those inimitable graces for ever unknown to artifice and affectation. Not but, even in those rural assemblies, there may be found some characters tainted with affectation; but then in the country they are exceptions, whereas in town they constitute the generality, who are so apt to mistake airs for graces, though nothing can be more essentially different.
But how shall those masters guard a scholar sufficiently against affectation, who are themselves notoriously infected with it? Nay, this is so common to them, that it is even the foundation of a proverbial remark, that no gentleman
can be said to dance well, who dances like a dancing-master. Those false refinements, that finical, affected air so justly reproached to the generality of teachers, a master should correct in himself before he can well give lessons for avoiding them to his pupils. And, in truth, they are but wretched substitutes to the true grounds and principles of the art, in which nothing is more strongly inculcated than the total neglect of them, and the reliance on the engaging and noble simplicity of nature.
It is then no paradox to say that the more deep you are in the art, the less will it stifle nature. On the contrary, it will, in the noble assurance which a competent skill is sure to bring with it, give to the natural graces a greater freedom and ease of display. Imperfection