INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
TO
MR. JOHN HAYTER'S SKETCHES OF FANNY KEMBLE,
IN THE CHARACTER OF JULIET.[ 12]
"Non piace a lei che innumerabil turba
Viva in atto di fuor, morta di dentro,
Le applauda a caso, e mano a man percuota;
Ne si rallegra se le rozzi voci
Volgano a lei quelle induiti lodi—
—Ma la possanza del divino iugegno
Vita di dentro."
Gasparo Gozzi—Sermone xiv.
It would be doing an injustice to the author of these sketches, and something worse than injustice to her who is the subject of them, should more be expected than the pencil could possibly convey, and more required than the artist ever intended to execute. Their merit consists in their fidelity, as far as they go; their interest in conveying a lively and distinct idea of some immediate and transient effects of grace and expression. They do not assume to be portraits of Miss Kemble; they are merely a series of rapid outlines, caught from her action, and exhibiting, at the first glance, just so much of the individual and peculiar character she has thrown into her impersonation of Juliet, as at once to be recognised by those who have seen her. To them alone these isolated passages—linked together in the imagination by all the intervening graces of attitude and sentiment, by the recollection of a countenance where the kindled soul looks out through every feature, and of a voice whose tones tremble into one's very heart—will give some faint reflection of the effect produced by the whole of this beautiful piece of acting,—or rather of nature, for here "each seems either." It will be allowed, even by the most enthusiastic lover of painting, that the merely imitative arts can do but feeble justice to the powers of a fine actress; for what graphic skill can fix the evanescent shades of feeling as they melt one into another?—