Where tyrants rule, and flaves with joy obey,
Let flavish minstrels pour th' enervate lay;
To Britons far more noble pleasures spring,

725

In native notes whilft Beard and Vincent; fing.
Might figure give a title unto fame,
What rival should with Yates difpute her claim?
But justice may not partial trophies raise,
Nor fink the actress in the woman's praise.

730

Still hand in hand her words and actions go,
And the heart feels more than the features show;
For thro' the regions of that beauteous face
We no variety of paffions trace ;
Dead to the foft emotions of the heart,:
No kindred foftness can those eyes impart :
The brow, still fix'd in forrow's fullen frame,
Void of distinction, marks all parts the fame.

What's a fine perfon, or a beauteous face,
Unless deportment gives them decent grace?
Blefs'd with all other requifites to please, ›
Some want the striking elegance of ease;
The curious eye
their aukward movement tires;
They feem like puppets led about by wires:

Others, like ftatues, in one pofture still,

Give great ideas of the workman's skill;

Wond'ring, his art we praise the more we view,

And only grieve he gave not motion too.

750

Weak, of themselves, are what we beauties call;

It is the manner which gives ftrength to all:

This teaches ev'ry beauty to unite,

And brings them forward in the nobleft light.

Happy in this, behold, amidft the throng,

755

With tranfient gleam of grace, Hart fweeps along.

If all the wonders of eternal grace,

A perfon finely turn'd, a mould of face,
Where, union rare, Expreffion's lively force
With Beauty's fofteft magick holds difcourfe,

760

Attract

Attract the eye; if feelings, void of art,
Rouze the quick paffions, and inflame the heart;
If mufick fweetly breathing from the tongue,
Captives the ear, Bride muft not pass unfung.

When fear, which rank ill-nature terms conceit,

By time and cuftom conquer'd, shall retreat;
When judgment, tutor'd by experience fage,
Shall shoot abroad, and gather ftrength from age;
When Heav'n in mercy shall the stage release
From the dull flumbers of a ftill-life piece;
When some stale flow'r, difgraceful to the walk,

765

770

Which long hath hung, tho' wither'd, on the stalk,

Shall kindly drop, then Bride shall make her way,
And merit find a paffage to the day;

Brought into action, fhe at once fhall raise,

775

Her own renown, and justify our praise.

Form'd for the tragick scene, to grace the stage
With rival excellence of love and rage,
Mistress of each soft art, with matchless skill
To turn and wind the passions as she will ;
To melt the heart with fympathetick woe,
Awake the figh, and teach the tear to flow;
To put on frenzy's wild diftracted glare,

780

And freeze the foul with horror and despair ;
With juft defert enroll'd in endless fame,
Conscious of worth fuperior, Cibber came.

785

When poor Alicia's madd'ning brains are rack'd,

And strongly imag'd griefs her mind diftract,
Struck with her grief, I catch the madness too,

My brain turns round, the headless trunk I view !

790

The roof cracks, shakes, and falls!-new horrors rise,

And Reason bury'd in the ruin lies.

Nobly disdainful of each slavish art,

She makes her first attack upon the heart;

Pleas'd with the fummons, it receives her laws,

795

And all is filence, fympathy, applause.

F

But

But when, by fond ambition drawn afide,
Giddy with praife, and puff'd with female pride,
She quits the tragick scene, and in pretence
To comick merit breaks down Nature's fence,
I scarcely can believe my ears or eyes,
Or find out Cibber thro' the dark disguife.
Pritchard, by Nature for the stage design'd,
In perfon graceful, and in sense refin'd;
Her art as much as Nature's friend became,
Her voice as free from blemish as her fame:
Who knows fo well in majefty to pleafe,
Attemper'd with the graceful charms of eafe?
When Congrève's favour'd pantomime to grace,
She comes a captive queen of Moorish race;
When love, hate, jealoufy, defpair, and rage,
With wildeft tumults in her breaft engage,
Still equal to herself is Zara feen;

Her paffions are the paffions of a queen.

When the to murder whets the tim'rous Thane,

I feel ambition rush through ev'ry vein;
Perfuafion hangs upon her daring tongue,

My heart grows flint, and ev'ry nerve's new ftrung.
In comedy Nay, there,' cries Critick, hold!

• Pritchard's for comedy too fat and old:
Who can, with patience, bear the grey coquette,
Or force a laugh with over-grown Julett?
Her fpeech, look, action, humour, all are juft,
But then her age and figure give disguft.'
Are foibles, then, and graces of the mind,

In real life, to fize or age confiñ'd?
Do fpirits flow, and is good-breeding plac'd,

800

805

810

815

820

825

As we grow old, doth affectation cease;
Or gives not age new vigour to caprice?
If in originals these things appear,

Why should we bar them in the copy here?

830

The

Let it devolve to one of fmaller breed.
All Actors, too, upon the back should bear
Certificate of birth-time when place where;
For how can criticks rightly fix their worth,
Unless they know the minute of their birth?
An audience, too, deceiv'd, may find, too late,
That they have clapp'd an actor out of date.

840

845

Figure, I own, at first may give offence,
And harshly ftrike the eye's too curious sense;
But when perfections of the mind break forth,
Humour's chafte fallies, judgment's solid worth;
When the pure genuine flame, by Nature taught,
Springs into fenfe, and ev'ry action's thought;
Before fuch merit all objections fly,
Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick's six feet high.

Oft have I, Pritchard, feen thy wond'rous skill ;
Confefs'd thee great, but find thee greater ftill;
That worth which fhone in scatter'd rays before,
Collected now, breaks forth with double pow'r.
The Jealous Wife! on that thy trophies raise,
Inferior only to the author's praise.

From Dublin, fam'd in legends of romance,
For mighty magick of enchanted lance,
With which her heroes arm'd, victorious prove,
And like a flood, run o'er the land of Love,
Moffop and Barry came-names ne'er defign'd
By Fate in the fame fentence to be join'd.
Rais'd by the breath of popular acclaim,
They mounted to the pinnacle of fame;

There the weak brain, made giddy with the height,
Spurr'd on the rival chiefs to mortal fight:

F 2

850

855

860

865

Thus

Thus fportive boys, around fome bafon's brim,
Behold the pipe-drawn bladders circling swim;
But if, from lungs more potent, there arise
Two bubbles of a more than common fize,
Eager for honour, they for fight prepare,
Bubble meets bubble, and both fink to air.
Moffop, attach'd to military plan,

870

875

Still kept his eye fix'd on his right-hand man ;

Whilst the mouth measures words with feeming skill,
The right-hand labours, and the left lies still;
For he refolv'd on Scripture grounds to go,

What the right doth, the left-hand shall not know.
With ftudy'd impropriety of fpeech

880

He foars beyond the hackney critick's reach ;

To epithets allots emphatick state,

Whilst principals, ungrac'd, like lacquies, wait;*

In ways first trodden by himself excels,

885

And ftands alone in indeclinables;
Conjunction, prepofition, adverb, join,

To stamp new vigour on the nervous line :

In monofyllables his thunders roll,

He, fhe, it, and we, ye, they, fright the foul.
In perfon taller than the common fize,
Behold where Barry draws admiring eyes!
When lab'ring paffions, in his bofom pent,

890

Convulfive rage, and ftruggling heave for vent,
Spectators, with imagin'd terrors warm,

895

Anxious expect the bursting of the storm;

But all unfit in fuch a pile to dwell,

His voice comes forth like Echo from her cell;

To fwell the tempeft needful aid denies,

And all adown the stage in feeble murmurs dies.

900

What man, like Barry, with fuch pains can err,

In elocution, action, character?

What man could give, if Barry was not here,

Such well-applauded tenderness to Lear?

Who