how many thousand pages I filled with soliloquies, sallies of despair,
menace, reproach, supplication, paternal reprimand, and such-like
matters appropriate to all kinds of scenes in improvised comedy. The
players call such fragments of studied rhetoric _generici_, or
commonplaces. They are vastly important to comedians who may not be
specially gifted for improvisation; and everything of the sort I found
in their repertory was vitiated by the turgid mannerisms of the
_seicento_.

[Illustration: PANTALONE (1550)

_Illustrating the Italian Commedia dell'Arte, or Impromptu Comedy_]

I was godfather at the christening of their babies, author-in-chief,
counsellor, master, and mediator to the whole company; all this without
assuming the pretentious airs of a pedant or a claimant on their
gratitude; but always at their own entreaty, while I preserved the tone
of disinterested, humane, and playful condescension.

Some of the girls of this dramatic family--none of whom were ugly, and
none without some aptitude for the profession--begged me to help them
with support and teaching. I consented, provided them with parts adapted
to their characters, taught them how they ought to act these parts, and
put them in the way of winning laurels. At their entreaties I devoted
some hours of my leisure to giving them more general instruction. I made
them read and translate French books suited to their calling. I wrote
them letters upon divers familiar themes, calculated to make them think
and develop their sentiments under the necessity of composing some reply
or other. I corrected their mistakes, which frequently consisted in the
unexpected and uncalled-for use of capital letters, and laughed
heartily while doing so. This afforded me sprightly amusement and gave
them a dash of education.

When they left Venice for the customary six months,[30] I ran no risk of
not receiving letters from them, written in rivalry with one
another--sometimes real love-letters--arriving by each post from Milan,
Turin, Genoa, Parma, Mantua, Bologna, all the cities where they stopped
to act. Nor were answers wanting upon my side; playful, affectionate,
threatening, derisive; taking any tone which I judged capable of keeping
these young creatures wide-awake. It seemed to me that such an active
correspondence and exchange of sentiments was the most appropriate and
profitable school for a comedian.

Let no man deceive himself by supposing that it is possible to