for example, upon the impossibility of
having a speech delivered by one who is actually blind, and deaf,
and dumb, we need only imagine here its utterance, by some wall-eyed
stammerer, who has a visage about as wooden and inexpressive as the
figure-head of a merchantman. Occasionally, it is true, physical defects
have been actually conquered, individual peculiarities have been in a
great measure counteracted, by rhetorical artifice, or by the arts of
oratorical delivery: instance the lisp of Demosthenes, the stutter of
Fox, the brogue of Burke, and the burr of Brougham.

Sometimes, but very rarely, it has so happened that an actor of nearly
peerless excellence, that a reader of all but matchless power, has
achieved his triumphs, has acquired his reputation, in very despite of
almost every conceivable personal disadvantage. Than the renowned actor
already mentioned, for example, Thomas Betterton, a more radiant name
has hardly ever been inscribed upon the roll of English players,
from Burbage to Garrick. Yet what is the picture of this incomparable
tragedian, drawn by one who knew him and who has described his person
for us minutely, meaning Antony Aston, in his theatrical pamphlet,
called the Brief Supplement? Why it is absolutely this,--"Mr.
Betterton," says his truthful panegyrist, "although a superlative good
actor, laboured under an ill figure, being clumsily made, having a great
head, a short, thick neck, stooped in the shoulders, and had fat, short
arms, which he rarely lifted higher than his stomach. He had little eyes
and a broad face, a little pock-fretten, a corpulent body, and thick
legs, with large feet. His voice was low and grumbling. He was incapable
of dancing, even in a country dance." And so forth! Yet this was the
consummate actor who was regarded by the more discerning among
his contemporaries, but most of all by the brother actors who were
immediately around him, as simply inimitable and unapproachable.

There was John Henderson, again, great in his time, both as a tragic and
a comic actor, greatest of all as a reader or an impersonator. Hear
him described by one who has most carefully and laboriously written his
encomium, that is to say, by John Ireland, his biographer. What do we
read of him? That in height he was below the common standard, that his
frame was uncompacted, that his limbs were short and ill-proportioned,
that his countenance had little of that flexibility which anticipates
the ton