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Show CONCLUSION. 533 ing. Without this preliminary study, he cannot reasonably hope for success, and his performance will be blemished by discord of action, anachronisms, improbabilities, and faults of every possible description. The musician is the interpreter of the poet, and the mime of the Ballet-master. Nevertheless, however talented the mime may be, he can never be truly expressive or interesting, if the Ballet-master do not give him parts suitable to his powers, and such as will excite in him that enthusiasm without which every thing, in the fine arts, is weak and languishing. At the theatre, nothing should be neglected; every thing should be made to contribute to the charm of the illusion. Ignorance and foolish indulgence are really detrimental to talent. Those artists who deem any infringement on old customs derogatory to good taste, and thus, by following bad examples, give them a current credit, are most reprehensible. They seem to have a religious respect for those monuments which still exist of a corrupted style; and thus, through their influence, art is fettered and advances slowly toward perfection. The same observation is applicable to those actors who, exaggerating expression and costume, render every subject unnatural. There was a time when, while authors endeavoured to imitate the language, and to depict the manners and passions of the heroes of Greece and R o m e , some of them either tolerated, or do not seem to have been aware of, the follies of ridiculous actors, who presented to their spectators an Augustus or Germanicus, an Achilles or an Alexander, in the court-dress of Louis X I V , or Louis X V . The singers and dancers at the same time represented the Heathen divinities, and the heroes of chivalry, in the most extravagant dresses. This and the tasteless declamation of the tragedians were equally applauded; these 34 |