e
voice are exquisitely harmonious, though we regard not one word of what
we hear, yet the power of the melody is so busy in the heart, that we
naturally annex ideas to it of our own creation, and, in some sort,
become ourselves the poet to the composer; and what poet is so dull as
not to be charmed with the child of his own fancy? So that there is even
a kind of language in agreeable sounds, which, like the aspect of
beauty, without words, speaks and plays with the imagination. While this
taste, therefore, is so naturally prevalent, I doubt, to propose
remedies for it were but giving laws to the winds, or advice to
inamoratos. And however gravely we may assert that profit ought always
to be inseparable from the delight of the theatre; nay, admitting that
the pleasure would be heightened by the uniting them, yet, while
instruction is so little the concern of the auditor, how can we hope
that so choice a commodity will come to a market where there is so
seldom a demand for it?

It is not to the actor, therefore, but to the vitiated and low taste of
the spectator that the corruptions of the stage, of what kind soever,
have been owing. If the public, by whom they must live, had spirit
enough to discountenance and declare against all the trash and fopperies
they have been so frequently fond of, both the actors and the authors,
to the best of their power, must naturally have served their daily table
with sound and wholesome diet.--But I have not yet done with my article
of elocution.

As we have sometimes great composers of music, who cannot sing, we have
as frequently great writers that cannot read; and though, without the
nicest ear, no man can be master of poetical numbers; yet the best ear
in the world will not always enable him to pronounce them. Of this truth
Dryden, our first great master of verse and harmony, was a strong
instance. When he brought his play of Amphytrion to the stage, I heard
him give it his first reading to the actors, in which, though it is
true, he delivered the plain sense of every period; yet the whole was in
so cold, so flat, and unaffecting a manner, that I am afraid of not
being believed when I affirm it.

On the contrary, Lee, far his inferior in poetry, was so pathetic a
reader of his own scenes, that I have been informed by an actor who was
present, that while Lee was reading to major Mohun, at a rehearsal,
Mohun, in the warmth of his admiration, threw down his part and said,
Unless I w