their public debates are preceded by dancing, as if they expected that that exercise would rouse their mental faculties, and clear their heads. The war-dance is also used by them, by way of proclamation of war against their enemies.
The foregoing summary sketch of some of the various dances, which are practised in different parts of the globe, and which, to describe universally and minutely, would fill whole volumes, may serve to show that nature has, in all parts of the inhabited world, given to man the instinct of dancing, as well as of speaking, or of singing. But it certainly depends on the nations who encourage the polite arts, once more to carry it up to that pitch of excellence, of which the history of the
Greeks and Romans shows it to have been susceptible, among the antients, however the moderns may have long fallen short of it. There has indeed lately appeared a dawning hope of its recovery; which, that it may not be frustrated, is the interest of all who wish well to an innocent and even useful pleasure.
OF
PANTOMIMES.
As this branch of the art of dancing is often mentioned, especially in this country, without a just idea being affixed to it, or any other idea than what is vulgarly taken from a species of compositions which are sometimes exhibited after the play, on the theatre here, (not to mention Sadler’s wells) and go by the name of pantomime entertainments; it may not be unacceptable to the reader, my laying
down before him the true grounds and nature of this diversion, which once made so great a figure in the theatrical sphere of action.
And as, on this point, Monsieur Cahusac, an ingenious French writer, has treated the historical part of it with so much accuracy, that it was hardly possible to offer any thing new upon it, beyond what he has furnished; and that not to make use of his researches would only betray me into a fruitless affectation of originality, I am very ready to confess, that for the best and greatest part of what I am now going to offer upon this subject I am indebted to his production.
That prodigious perfection to which the antients carried the pantomime art, appeared so extraordinary to the celebrated
abbot Du Bos, that, not being able to contradict the authorities which establish the truth of it, he was tempted to consider the art of dancing in those times as something wholly different from what is at present understood by dancing.