speech requires variety, or where the different parts of the fame character give us the reprefentation of different paffions, who is, we will not say more vary'd, but who is so much, so very different from himself as this performer?

If he is thus full of variety where necessary in the feveral parts of the fame character, how vastly more so is he in the different characters he plays! These plead loudly against this charge of monotony as a natural imperfection in him, as they are as various as can be selected from the whole compass of our dramatic writings.. Will any man suppose that the player has a natural and unalterable sameness in his voice and manner who performs two so different parts as those of Cato and Sir John Falstaff, and both equally well; both fo well, that the greatest players of the age have never dar'd to put themselves upon the comparifon with him in either of them.

If any one suspect Mr. Quin of too much sameness in his manner in Cato, let them suspend their judgment till they have seen him in Jaques; let them attend to his description of the fool:

A fool, a fool, I met a fool i'th' forest,
As I do live by food, a motley fool,

Who laid him down and bafk'd him in the sun,
And rail'd at Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms, and yet a motley fool.

Good-morrow, fool, quoth I. No, fir, quoth he,

Call me not fool till heaven hath fent me for

tune:

And then he drew a dial from his poak,

And, looking on it with lack-luftre eye,

Says very gravely, It is ten o'clock.

Thus

Thus may we fee, quoth he, how the world

wags;

'Tis but an hour ago that it was nine,
And in another hour 'twill be eleven;

And fo from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale. - When I did hear
The motley fool thus moral on the time,
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
That fools should be fo deep contemplative;
And I did laugh sans intermiffion
An hour by his dial. O noble fool!
O worthy fool! motley's the only ware.

Every body that is free from prejudice will allow that there is more variety in Mr. Quin's speaking this, than any player we are able to remember ever gave his audience in barely telling a story, for this is no more; tho' so well given by the poet, and so happily deliver'd by this player, that it gives us a greater variety of pleasure than we find almost any where in the same number of lines.

The part we are mentioning abounds with beauties; and this actor does not fail to give them all their true luftre. To give an additional instance from the same play, let us call to mind his manner of delivering that never too often to be repeated description of the several stages of human life :

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And each man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling

Mewling and puking in its nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace with a doleful ballad
Made to his mistress' eye-brow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like a pard,
Jealous in honour, fudden, quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the

justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
Full of wise saws and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The fixth age shifts
Into the lean and flipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch at fide,
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shanks; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble pipes,
And whiftles in the found. Last scene of all,
That ends this sad eventful history,
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, fans taste, fans every
thing.

Whoever remembers his speaking this, remembers one of the greatest things ever executed upon the stage: the masterly manner in which he throws off the measure in these lines has nosmall merit; but the inimitable beauty with which he delivers the several parts is such as one would think must have sham'd every body out of the charge of monotony against him, and establish'd him as the standard of true and rational variety.

If there can be thought to be any occafion for

a farther instance of this beauty in this great player, let us remember him in the Spanish Fryar, and recollect the change of his tone and accent, while he is threatening the Colonel, and when the palliating purse of guineas has been drop'd before him; or when we have thought of his Othello, let us remember his Sir John Falstaff: with what inimitable spirit, humour, and variety, does he deliver that excellent account Shakespear has given of his foldiers,

"If I be not asham'd of my foldiers I am a sows'd gurnet; I misus'd the king's press-money most damnably: I have got, in exchange for an hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press me none but good house-holders, yeomen's fons: enquire me out contracted batchellors, such as have been afk'd twice on the banns, such a commodity of warm flaves, who had as lieve hear the devil as a drum, such as fear the report of a culverin worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild-duck; I press me none but such toafts and butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins heads; and they have bought out their services, and now my whole charge confifts of antients, corporals, lieutenants, and gentlemen of companies, flaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs lick'd his fores; such as indeed were never foldiers, but difcarded serving men, younger fons to younger brothers, unjust tapsters and oftlers tradefallen, the calm cankers of a quiet world and long peace, ten times more dishonourably ragged than an old-fac'd antient; such have. I to fill up the rooms of fuch as have bought out their services, You wou'd think I had an hundred and fifty tatter'd prodigals just come from fwine-keeping; from eating draff and hufks. A mad fellow met me on the way and told me, I had been unloading all the gibbets and had press'd the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scare-crows-I'll not march with them thro' Coventry, that's flat: nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs as if they had gyves on, for indeed I had the most of them out of prifon. There's but a shirt and a half in my whole company, and the half shirt is two napkins tack'd together, and thrown over the shoulders like a herald's coat without fleeves: and the shirt, to say truth, was stolen from the host at St. Alban's, or the reduc'd innkeeper of Daintry; but that's all one, they'll find linen enough on every hedge."

Never was there more room for humour and variety in the player than in this famous speech, and never was there so much of either shewn in it as by the perfon we are celebrating in this part. We wish the charge of sameness in deportment in all characters, which fome are apt to lay againft another great player, could as justly or as eafily be got over as the injudicious charge of monotony againft Mr. Quin is by these, and might be by a thoufand other instances.

We are also to reckon, among the number of the causes of false recitation, or a vicious delivery in our actors, the reigning paffion that most of them have for fome particular manner of playing: if they suppose they have merit in any one thing, they will not rest till they introduce that fort of merit into every part, even into things the most oppofite and contradictory: if they have been told they