reigns unsubdued within his heart; and when Desdemona enters, Othello gives himself up to the happiness of believing her innocent. But Iago does not abandon his prey; he pours fresh poison into the breast of the Moor, and works him up to feelings of revenge, which blood alone can satiate. You know the manner in which Talma used to deliver the following passage:

Dans leur rage cruelle

Nos lions du désert, dans leurs antres brûlans,
Déchirent quelquefois les voyageurs tremblans—
Il vaudrait mieux pour lui que leur faim dévorante,
Dispersât les lambeaux de sa chair palpitante,

Que de tomber vivant dans mes terribles mains."

The lines in Shakspeare, which correspond to these, are not so emphatic; but, delivered by Kean and Macready, they produce the same terror which the roar of the tiger must excite in the unhappy wanderer of the desert:

"Oh that the slave had forty thousand lives!

One is too poor, too weak for my revenge!"

Othello's eyes flash fire, his teeth are clenched; his hands, by their motion, seem already plunged in the blood of his enemy. This scene leads to an anticipation of the catastrophe. A feeling of

* A look, an action, a single word, would be more expressive than all this Moorish declamation. However, it must be remembered, that in this passage Ducis has not translated Shakspeare.

returning tenderness for Desdemona, suspends, for a while, the vengeance of the Moor; and after her death, after he imagines that he has performed an act of justice, he becomes conscious of the full extent of his loss, and the torments of vain remorse are now as terrible to him as the workings of his furious rage. At this point, Kean and Macready produce a surprising effect, by one of those natural and sudden bursts of feeling, which I cannot bring myself to look upon as trivial. When Othello is made acquainted of Iago's villainy, he gives vent to his anger and despair, by the exclamation of "fool! fool!" a phrase which has been generally esteemed vulgar, and to which the English actors used to endeavour to give a degree of importance by the vehemence of their action. Kean was the first to give it due effect, by a rapid, and almost inarticulate mode of utterance, accompanied by a sort of half smile, at his fatal incredulity.

The studied pomp of our tragic style, necessarily obliges, even our most natural actors, to adopt rigid rules of declamation. Talma has been censured for speaking, rather than declaiming, in tragedy. Shakspeare and Plutarch have drawn their heroes in morning-gowns and slippers.* On the English stage, kings are merely men; while, on ours, they are, sometimes, almost smothered by

* I do not remember whence I borrow this expression; I believe it is from Sherlock.

the weight of embroidered robes, and the stately perriwigs of Louis XIV.'s court.*

I have little to say on the subject of the melodramatic entertainment which followed Othello. The taste of the galleries is consulted at Covent Garden, as well as at Drury Lane. "Cherry and Fair Star," is borrowed from a fairy tale of Madame d'Aulnoy. The hero and heroine are two unfortunate, innocent, and persecuted lovers, who at length triumph over all sorts of enchantments, by dint of courage and virtue. As to its literary merits, the piece is on a level with "Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp." The decorations, and the changes of scenery, were as splendid, and as ably managed, as if they had been under the direction of the magician Ciceri. A galley enters full sail into the port of Cyprus. We are transported, first to the garden of fairies, next to the grove of illusion, to a forest of fire, which surrounds a basin of dancing water, to the summit of Mount Caucasus, and, lastly, the triumph of virtue is exhibited in a palace worthy of Versailles. It is impossible not to feel interested in the fate of Fair Star; the charming actress who represents that part, would be distinguished for her grace, even amidst the train of nymphs over whom Bigottini and Noblet pre

side.

* I speak figuratively; but, I believe, I give a fair idea of the staterobes, which tradition has transmitted to our actors, notwithstanding the happy revolution that has taken place in tragic costume.

This fairy spectacle has enabled me to form some notion of the nature of those splendid historical representations, such as the coronation of George IV., which frequently amuse the Londoners for a hundred successive nights. Napoleon's marriage, I believe, furnished the subject of one of these historico-dramatic entertainments.

LETTER XXXIV.

TO M. C. GOSSELIN.

THERE are better tragic actors in London than in Paris, where, for my part, I generally feel very much inclined to fall asleep during the performance of a tragedy. In Paris, tragedy is a literary entertainment, and in London a dramatic treat. This is as much owing to the difference of acting, as to the difference of style in tragic composition. Our comic performers, however, evince better taste than the English. Not but that the theatre of the Rue Richelieu may be severely criticised, even in comedy; and I doubt whether it could bring together, in every piece, four actors, equal in talent to those whom I saw the other night at Covent Garden, in the "School for Scandal."

Farren in Sir Peter Teazle, Young in Joseph Surface, Charles Kemble in Charles, Liston in Sir Benjamin Backbite, and Fawcett in Sir Oliver, are each almost perfect in their particular line. Mrs. Davison, in Lady Teazle, appeared to me superior to any actress I have yet seen in London; for the famous Mrs. Jordan, whom the English compared to Mademoiselle Mars, is no more, and Miss Kelly is not engaged either at Covent Garden or Drury Lane.

Farren, though still very young, is a finished comic actor. He has a fund of humour, and gives an appearance of truth to the most grotesque caricatures. Yet, in the higher walks of comedy, he never loses sight of nature, and always shews singular discernment in the conception of his parts. There is something extremely odd in the play of his countenance. His features sometimes remain during a whole scene as immoveable as those of a mask, and then, all of a sudden, are made to express the feeling which agitates him with extraordinary flexibility. He is admirable in Lovegold, which is Molière's Harpagon clothed in an English dress by Fielding; in Lord Ogleby, the model of the Ci-devant jeune homme; and he is the only actor who has successfully personated one of the finest creations of Sir Walter Scott's fancy, namely, Isaac of York. Farren represents, with admirable correctness, the crouching humility of the old Jew, and the habits which he has contracted, through age and continual distrust, until terror and misfortune drive him to despair. He is no