CHAP. I.] WRITING THE BEE.

causes ;* and had some liappy illustrations from Ms own 1759.
experience.! His later remarks, on the want of general 2Et.3i.
stage discipline in England (" dirty-shirted guards rolling
" their eyes round upon the audience, instead of keeping
" them fixed upon the actors "); on skilful management of
gesture (in which he excepts Garrick and Mrs. Olive from
his censure, placing them on a level with the French); and
in explanation of the ill-success of the English operatic
stage, where he touches the springs that operate to this

* TMs essay touches the vital distinction between comic acting as an art, a
study, and comic acting as a mere effusion of personal humour or enjoyment. I
have heard my honoured friend Charles Lamb say, shortly before he died, that the
difference of the existing race of comedians from those he remembered in early
life was that less study is now found necessary than was formerly judged to be
requisite. That I believe to be the truth. "We do not want capable actors, at
least in comedy; but their end is answered with less pains. The modern way, as
Lamb too truly objected, is to get a familiarity with the audience, to strike up
a kind of personal friendship, a reciprocity of greeting and good will, to be hail-
fellow well-met with them ; and it is amazing, he would say, how much careless-
ness of acting slips in by this intercourse. It is indeed easy to imagine such
coquetting between the performer and the public, where ladies are in question,
carried to an alarming excess. Instead of playing their pretty airs upon their lover
on the stage, as Mrs. Abingdon or Mrs. Gibber were content to do, or Mrs. Oldfield
before them, their whole artillery of charms is now directed to ensnare the whole
audience—• "a thousand gentlemen perhaps !" For this many-headed beast they
furl "and unfurl their fans, and teach their lips to curl in smiles, and their
bosoms to exhibit the prettiest instructive heavings. Those personal applications,
in short, which used to be a sort of sauce piquant for the pert epilogue, now give
the standing relish to the whole play. "Oh !" exclaimed Charles Lamb, at the
conclusion of some such description as this, "when shall we see a female part
" acted in the quiet unappealing manner of Miss Pope's Mrs. Candour ? When
" shall we get rid of the Dalilahs of the stage ?" It is 'something of the same tone
which Goldsmith adopts in his criticism. " I would particularly recommend our
'' rising actresses never to take notice of the audience, on any occasion whatever; let
"the spectators applaud never so loudly, their praises should pass, except at the
"end of the epilogue, with seeming inattention."

•(• Need I quote from his later Essays to show what a thorough notion he had of

country acting, and, for the matter of that, town acting too ? t{ There is one rule

' by which a strolling player may be ever secure of success; that is, in our

' theatrical way of expressing it, to make a great deal of the character. To

' speak and act as in common life, is not playing, nor is it what people come to

' see : natural speaking, like sweet wine, runs glibly over the palate, and scarcely

' leaves any taste behind it; but being high in a part resembles vinegar, which

' grates upon the taste, and one feels it while he is drinking." Adventures of a

Strolling Player.might be left in vindication of