ere able to play it as well as you read it, to what purpose
should I undertake it? And yet this very author, whose elocution, raised
such admiration in so capital an actor, when he attempted to be an actor
himself, soon quitted the stage in an honest despair of ever making any
profitable figure there.

From all this I would infer, that let our conception of what we are to
speak be ever so just, and the ear ever so true, yet, when we are to
deliver it to an audience (I will leave fear out of the question) there
must go along with the whole a natural freedom and becoming grace, which
is easier to conceive than to describe: for without this inexpressible
somewhat, the performance will come out oddly disguised, or somewhere
defectively unsurprising to the hearer. Of this defect too, I will give
you yet a stranger instance, which you will allow fear could not be the
occasion of. If you remember Estcourt, you must have known that he was
long enough upon the stage, not to be under the least restraint from
fear, in his performance. This man was so amazing and extraordinary a
mimic, that no man or woman, from the coquette to the privy-counsellor,
ever moved or spoke before him, but he would carry their voice, look,
mein, and motion instantly into another company. I have heard him make
long harangues, and form various arguments, even in the manner of
thinking, of an eminent pleader at the bar, with every the least article
and singularity of his utterance so perfectly imitated, that he was the
very _alter ipse_, scarce to be distinguished from his original. Yet
more; I have seen upon the margin of the written part of Falstaff, which
he acted, his own notes and observations upon almost every speech of it,
describing the true spirit of the humour, and with what tone of voice,
look, and gesture each of them ought to be delivered; yet, in his
execution upon the stage, he seemed to have lost all those just ideas he
had formed of it, and almost through the character, laboured under a
heavy load of flatness. In a word, with all his skill in mimickry, and
knowledge of what ought to be done, he never, upon the stage, could
bring it truly into practice, but was upon the whole, a languid
unaffecting actor. After I have shown you so many necessary
qualifications, not one of which can be spared in true theatrical
elocution, and have at the same time proved, that with the assistance of
them all united, the whole may still come forth defective, w