(To be Continued.)
Dr. John Hill, an author, who to great learning, judgment, sagacity, and luminous fancy, joined unparalleled industry, gratified the British public for a long time with a diurnal paper wholly from his own pen, called "the Inspector." In the course of this work he gave some of the most admirable strictures upon the plays and players of his day. From that work we intend to give some select passages. The following is deserving of particular attention for the truth and accuracy of the parallels it presents to our view.
While I admire in Barry the quick conception, the strong expression, and the fine taste of Julio Romano; while I hang upon the expression of his eyes, when tenderness is the passion to be described by them, and while in the several parts of a history, or through the varied scenes of an interesting tragedy, I am at once surprised and charmed with the choice of attitudes in both, I cannot be blind to the defects that stain as well the painting as the scene: there was always what the judges call a dryness, a hardness in the painter, and the same foible now and then discloses itself in the less guarded moments of the player: neither the one nor the other seem to have been perfect masters of the doctrine of lights and shadows, and both are therefore sometimes extravagant, and not always graceful: this happy difference, however, appears between them, that while the arrogance of the painter esteemed his faults as excellencies, the player, equally capable of giving advice to himself, and of receiving it from others, will soon scandalize all criticism by annihilating the foibles that gave it origin.
The genius, the soul of Titian, is revived in Garrick; both give us not resemblances, but realities: they do not represent but create, upon the canvass or upon the scene; and what from others we would admire as representations, we read in these as actions. There is in the performance of this player, all the delicacy of taste, and all the dignity of expression that we reverence in the painter: his figures, where the subject gives him scope, are noble almost beyond imagination, his attitudes the most strictly appropriated to the sensations that inspire them, and his colouring, to borrow a metaphor from the sister art to express an excellence for which the other has yet no word of its own, is the greatest that we ever did or ever must expect to see. With all the sweetness and delicacy of his imagery, there is a glow of fire and freedom that at once surprises and charms his audience, and, like his brother artist, he excels all men who have ever been eminent, in the peculiar distinguishing touches which separate passion from passion; and thence give at once the greatest spirit and the strictest truth to the representation. I shall hardly venture to affirm that there is no foible in any of the pieces given us by either of these artists; but there is a blaze of majesty and beauty, throughout the works of both, that at once engages the whole eye, and with its superior lustre dims what may be less worthy praise till it becomes indiscernible.
While Bellamy assumes the piety, the tenderness, and the sorrows of a Cordelia, or heightens the repentance of a Shore, we own that a Tintoret has done some pictures equal to Corregio. The first of these is the painter to whom I would resemble this rising actress, the latter only breathes in Cibber. No woman ever excelled Miss Bellamy in the requisites from nature, and were but her love to the profession, her application to its necessary studies, and her patience in going through the difficulties that lie in the road to eminence in it, equal to her abilities, she would have few equals. The outlines of her figures are sometimes faulty, but the colouring always pleases.
All that Corregio executed by the pencil we see in real life from Mrs. Cibber; the strength of lights and shadows, of the glaring and the obscure, are equal in the representations of both, but were never equalled by any other in either art. The dignity of sorrow, and natural and unaffected graces which that artist gives to his Madonas, this lady diffuses over the whole figure in the tragic scene that requires it; we are equally struck by both: we see nothing like either: and we admire the execution while we have no conception of the manner in which it is performed. The strength and heightening are alike admirable in each, and the consummate sweetness only to be rivalled by the expressive strength of the colouring. In the conduct and finish of their pieces, both have done wonders; and as the pictures of Corregio are so equal in their several parts, that, though the labour of years, they seem to have been finished in one day, so that the longest characters of this actress are so uniform throughout, that it is evident there are no careless absences, no false extravagances in any part, but that the whole is the resemblance of one temper actuated, though under various circumstances, by one passion.
In Mrs. Pritchard one sees revived the extensive powers of Hannibal Carrache: while we pursue her through the varied forms she assumes we cannot but acknowledge the character of Corregio, the fire of Titian, and the dignity of Raphael; this lady, of all the players, as that master of all the painters, comes nearest the character of a universal genius.
Woodward strikes the judicious eye with a strong resemblance of Paul Veronese: he has all the vivacity and ease of that great painter, and fully equals him in his fancy for the singular and the shining in his draperies; but, as he shares his beauties, he is not without his faults. His composition is sometimes improper, and his design always incorrect; but with these blemishes, however, his colouring is so well calculated to catch the eye, that he never fails to strike at first sight, and makes so happy an impression on the generality of an audience, that they never perceive what is deficient.
Though the last, not the least in my esteem, Macklin shall be produced; nor must those who judge superficially, be surprized when they see me call forth for his parallel Michael Angelo. It must be confessed of this great painter, that the choice of his attitudes was, though never unjust, not always pleasing: that his taste in design was not the most minutely fine, nor his outlines the most elegant; that he was sometimes extravagant in his conceptions, and bold even to rashness in his execution: perhaps the player of the parallel inherits some tincture of these faults; but to compensate, he has all his excellencies. He knows the foundation of the art better than them all: he designs, if less beautifully than some, more accurately than any: he better understands nature of the human frame, and the situation and power of its muscles than any man who ever played, nor has any man ever understood it like him as a science: there is an air of truth in all his figures, a greatness and severity in many of them that demand the utmost praise: and in the whole, if nature has qualified him less for shining in some of the most conspicuous parts than many, none has fewer faults.