I think I can be quite sure that while the great Egyptian uttered these lines the hearers could be at no leisure to examine whether her arms had never quitted their bondage, or the feet recovered a position to which they were certainly more accustomed, energetic as it must be confessed they always were, in common with the rest of that dignified and perfect anatomy.

Nor are grace and energy of action at all opposed to each other. Constraint, affectation, mannerism are the great foes alike to both. Through the whole range of my stage recollections the most energetic things were at the same time the most truly graceful. Think of all the grand points in either brother or sister, and you will find the consent of grace and energy invariable. When the true artist is really up to the great occasion before him, the energy propels his frame to the right position, and that speaking index, the hand, announces the graceful triumph. Look at Mrs. Siddons herself in Katharine: Lord Cardinal! To you I speak.' Can you survey the energy and overlook the grace? Look at the oath in the Trois Horaces' by David, and bow before the union of the two great principles.

But to close with the recitations, or readings, to whichever class the beautiful efforts of Mrs. Siddons are assigned. For the sake of any future exhibition of this sort I will notice one happy effect, accidental or designed (probably the latter), which should invariably enter among the preparations of the apartment. A large red screen formed what painters would call a background to the figure of the charming reader. She was dressed in white, and her dark hair à la Grecque crossed her temples in full masses. Behind the screen a light was placed, and, as the head moved, a bright circular irradiation seemed to wave around its outline, which gave to a classic mind the impression that the priestess of Apollo stood before you uttering the inspiration of the deity in immortal verse. But such oracles have long been dumb.

'Apollo from his shrine

Can no more divine;

No nightly trance, or breathed spell

Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.'

Her noble figure on such occasions may be accurately conceived from Sir Thomas Lawrence's whole-length of Mrs. Siddons reading her favourite poem, the Paradise Lost. The picture was painted for her friend Mrs. Fitz-Hugh, and is a very sublime effort of the great artist.

Ι

Perhaps I ought not to quit my subject without trying the effect of the pen in delineating the person of Mrs. Siddons, and the charm that certainly accompanied her through every era of her public life. It is fortunately done to my hands by a foreign writer of her own sex, and I shall annex it in the original language, claiming only the praise for first presenting to the British nation so eloquent a description and so admirable a likeness :

'Elle était grande et de belle taille, mais de cette grandeur qui n'épouvante point, et ne sert qu'à la bonne mine. Elle avait le teint fort beau, les cheveux d'un châtain clair, le nez très-bien fait, la bouche bien taillée, l'air noble, doux, enjoué, modeste, et pour rendre sa beauté plus parfaite, les plus beaux yeux du monde. Ils étaient noirs, brillants, doux, passionnés, pleins d'esprit. Leur éclat avait je ne sais quoi qu'on ne saurait exprimer. La mélancolie douce y paraissait quelquefois avec tous les charmes qui la suivent. L'enjouement s'y faisait voir à son tour, avec tous les attraits que la joie peut inspirer. Son esprit était fait exprès pour sa beauté, grand, doux, agréable. Elle parlait juste et naturellement, de bonne grâce et sans affectation. Elle savait le monde et mille choses dont elle ne faisait pas vanité. Elle avait mille appas inévitables; de sorte qu'unissant les charmes de la vertu à ceux de la beauté et de l'esprit, on pouvait dire qu'elle méritait l'admiration qu'on eut pour elle.'

The reader will be delighted, I have no doubt, with so fine a likeness, and require only to be told the name of the fair and eloquent writer. But it is with pride and pleasure I inform him that for this portrait Mrs. Siddons never sat, however striking the resemblance. It is the sketch, still, of one of the greatest and best of women- of Madame de Maintenon, by her friend Mademoiselle de Scudéry.

I have now conducted this great performer through the whole of her professional existence, and if I could flatter

myself that I had fully accomplished my design, have delivered to the world a monument to her honour.

But no one can be more sensible than myself that our wishes are the children of the imagination, and that their execution must be bounded by our power.

INDEX