ersonated character might require him to be master of?

Future actors may perhaps wish I would set this grievance in a
stronger light; and, to say the truth, where auditors are ill-bred, it
cannot well be expected that actors should be polite. Let me therefore
show how far an artist in any science is apt to be hurt by any sort of
inattention to his performance.

While the famous Corelli,[A] at Rome, was playing some musical
composition of his own to a select company in the private apartment of
his patron-Cardinal, he observed, in the heighth of his harmony,
his Eminence was engaging in a detached conversation, upon which
he suddenly stopt short and gently laid down his instrument. The
Cardinal, surprised at the unexpected cessation, asked him if a string
was broke? To which Corelli, in an honest conscience of what was due
to his musick, reply'd, "No, Sir, I was only afraid I enterrupted
business." His Eminence, who knew that a genius could never shew
itself to advantage where it had not its regards, took this reproof in
good part, and broke off his conversation to hear the whole concerto
played over again.

[Footnote A: Arcangelo Corelli, the "father of modern instrumental
music."]

Another story will let us see what effect a mistaken offence of this
kind had upon the French theatre, which was told me by a gentleman of
the long robe, then at Paris, and who was himself the innocent author
of it. At the tragedy of "Zaire," while the celebrated Mademoiselle
Gossin[A] was delivering a soliloquy, this gentleman was seized with
a sudden fit of coughing, which gave the actress some surprise and
interruption; and his fit increasing, she was forced to stand silent
so long that it drew the eyes of the uneasy audience upon him, when a
French gentleman, leaning forward to him, asked him, If this actress
had given him any particular offence, that he took so publick an
occasion to resent it? The English gentleman, in the utmost surprise,
assured him, So far from it, that he was a particular admirer of
her performance; that his malady was his real misfortune, and if he
apprehended any return of it, he would rather quit his seat than
disoblige either the actress or the audience.

[Footnote A: Jeanne, Catherine Gossin, of the Comedie Francaise.]

This publick decency in their theatre I have myself seen carried so
far that a gentleman in their second Loge, or middle-gallery, being
observed to sit forward himself while a lady sate