y gives yet a greater
security, consequently a greater ease and a nobler freedom to
the motions of the performer; the performance cannot but meet
with fuller approbation. And yet it may be as bad to show too
much art, as to have too little. The point is to employ no more
of art than just what serves to grace nature, but never to hide
or obscure her.

Great is the difference between the antient and the modern
dances. The antient ones were full of sublime simplicity.
But that simplicity was far from excluding the delicate, the
graceful, and even the brilliant. The moderns are so accustomed
to those dances from which nature is banished, and false
refinements substituted in her room, that it is to be questioned
whether they would relish the returning in practice to the purer
principles of the art. Myself knowing better, and sensible that
the principles of nature are the only true ones, have been
sometimes forced to yield to the torrent of fashion, and to
adopt in practice those florishings of art, which in theory
I despised; and justly, for surely the plainest imitation of
nature must be the grounds from which alone the performance can
be carried up to any degree of excellence. It is with our art,
as in architecture, if the foundation is not right, the
superstructure will be wrong.

This primitive source then must be studied, known, and well
attended to; or we only follow the art blindly, and without
certainty. Thence the common indifference of so many performers,
who mind nothing more than a rote of the art, without tracing it
to its origin, nature.

To succeed, we must abandon the false taste, and embrace the
true; which is not only the best guide to perfection; but
when rendered familiar, by much the most easy and the most
delightful. It has all the advantages that truth has over
falshood.

The greater the simplicity of steps in a dance, the more
beautiful it is; and requires the more attention in the
performer to exactness and delicacy; for slowness and neatness
being in the character of simplicity, afford the spectator both
leisure and distinctness for his examination: whereas dances of
intricate evolutions, or quick motions, in their confusion and
hurry, allow no clearness, or time for particular observation.

If the merit of a theatrical dancer were to consist, as many
imagine, in nothing but in the motions of the legs, in cutting
lively or brilliant capers, in surprizing steps, in the agility
of the body,