dresses, assumed habits of costume, and established this improvement on the theatre.

Thus far we have extracted from our hero's eloge in the Mercure, Mar. 1778. The first piece in these memoirs, which is written by LEKAIN himself, is intitled Particular Facts relative to my first connection with M. de Voltaire.' Here we have an account of all the little private theatres in Paris, in 1748, at the time of the rejoicings for the peace; of one of which (at the Hotel de Fabac) he himself was the founder: but of all these young spouters, though some of them entered into provincial companies, he was the only one who established himself at Paris.-He relates that his acquaintance with his patron, Voltaire, had its beginning at one of these little theatres, or rather spouting clubs, which the poet had honoured with his presence; and who, being somewhat pleased with the manner in which he had performed the part of a lover in the comedy of the night, made inquiries respecting him of the author of the piece, and desired to see him and have some conversation with him at his own house. The young Roscius then describes his reception, and the respect and enthusiasm with which he approached this great man ;- whose eyes flashed fire, wit, and imagination.'

While I was trying to make him a speech, without being able to give it utterance, M. de V. put an end to my embarrassment, by throwing his paternal arms round my neck, and thanking God for having created a being who had moved and affected him, by repeating bed verses. He asked me a great number of questions concerning my parents, profession, education, and future prospects. After I had satisfied him in these particulars, and taken part of a dozen cups of chocolate and coffee, (which formed the poet's sole nourishment from five in the morning till three in the afternoon,) I answered him with great firmness and intrepidity, that I knew of no happiness equal to that of acting plays; that a cruel and afflicting calamity had left me master of my actions; and that, being in possession of a small patrimony of 750 livres a year, (about 30 guineas) I had hopes that, if I gave up trade and the business of my father, I should not lose by the exchange, provided that, at some future period, I should be aímitted into the King's company of comedians.

"Ah my friend! (cried M. de V.) make no such resolution. Take my advice; act for your pleasure, but not as a profession: it is the first, most rare, and most difficult of talents, but it is disgraced by barbarians, and proscribed by hypocrites. France will one day entertain a proper esteem for your art: but then there will be no Baron, no Lecouvreur, no Dangeville! If you will relinquish your project, I will lend you 10,000 francs to set you up; and you shall pay me when you can. Go, my friend, and return at the end of the week; reflect well ou my proposal, and give me a positive answer." Astonished,

114

1

'Astonished, confused, and moved even to tears, by the kindness and generous offer of this great man, whom they called a miser, unfeeling and pitiless; my heart overflowed with gratitude. I was beginning to make speeches, without being able to pronounce a word, and was retiring, much dissatisfied with my inability to express my sensations, when he called me back, and desired me to repeat some frag. ments of speeches in the parts which I had studied. Without refle tion, I offered to give a speech in Gustavus." No Piron! (he cried out in a thundering and terrible voice;) I hate bad versesrepeat to me all that you can remember of Racine.” —- Luckily, when at school, at the Mazarin college, I had gotten all the tragedy of Athalia by heart, after having heard it read many times to the scholars who were to act in it. I therefore began the first scene, repeating, alternately, the parts of Abner and Joab: but I had not quite performed my task, when M. de V. exclaimed, in a fit of enthusiasm, Good God! what admirable verses! And what is very astonishing, the whole drama is written with the same fire, the same purity, from the first line to the last; the whole tragedy is admirable! — — Adieu, my child, (added he, embracing me,) I will venture to predict that you will have a voice which will penetrate the soul, and that you will be the chief delight of Paris: but, for heaven's sake, do not mount any public stage."

Such was our first interview; the second was still more to my satisfaction, because, at my earnest intreaties, he consented that Į should pursue my dramatic studies, took me into his house, gave me my board and a good apartment, and built a small theatre at the top of his mansion, in which he allowed me to act with his nieces, and my spouting friends.'

The rest of these Particulars consist of anecdotes full of the highest praises of Voltaire's generosity and disinterestedness. These encomiums, whether deserved or exaggerated, at least manifest the goodness of LEKAIN's heart, and are honourable to his memory: but the pleasure of the Poet and that of the Actor was reciprocal. The former found in the latter a young man whose talents fulfilled his ideas of dramatic perfection; and who realized so successfully his own conception in writing, that he probably foresaw that, in future, LEKAIN would become the chief support of his tragedies. Indeed, both these celebrated men seem to have had such exalted ideas of theatrical importance, as to think that not only the honour and welfare of France, but of the whole universe, depended on its cultivation and prosperity.

Many of the papers in this volume contain narrations of theatrical squabbles and controversies long since forgotten in France, and which must be totally uninteresting in England. Instigated, doubtless, by Voltaire, at one time LEKAIN drew up an address to the Lords of the King's bed-chamber, who had

the

the direction of the theatres, intreating them to establish a Royal Academy for the education of young dramatic performers; as Louis XIV. had done for music, painting, and sculpture. In this memorial, great jealousy and indignation are expressed on account of the increasing favour of the Comic-Opera at this time, (1756.) We find also another memoir for the removal of the Benches which were allowed for select parties on the stage, to the utter destruction of all illusion by scenes, machinery, and stage effect. This point was carried.-Perhaps the best letter in the volume is the answer written by LEKAIN, in the name of the whole company, on the occasion of a great nephew of le grand Corneille, in indigent circumstances, having solicited a benefit at the French theatre. The request is here granted in the most polite and benevolent manner.

Critiques on plays, or casting of parts, and on the manner of acting them, next occur: but, at this distance of time, these observations can very little interest the admirers of the drama in France, and still less those of other countries.

The Deliberation in 1773 on a plan for establishing a secular Commemoration of Moliere, and for erecting a statue to his honour, is the most and nearly sole generally interesting scheme which we find among the detached pieces of this work. The rest may be termed local as well as temporary. The plan, however, was not supported like our Commemoration of Handel, in 1784; and the benefit play in France produced only 3600 livres, little more than 150% sterling.

Voltaire's partiality to LEKAIN, and the actor's reverence for the poet, continued to the end of their lives. M. de V. commences a letter to him in 1762, thus: "Monsieur le Garrick de France-but you are Garrick only in merit, not in purse"&c. In 1763, he begins, in the same manner, an answer to a request from the whole troop at the French theatre, to supply them with a new tragedy. After having expressed his sense of their regard, and how much he is obliged by their attention, he says: " but you must not imagine that, in writing tragedios of five acts in Alexandrine verse, the ice of mount Jura communicates much inspiration. An old man may write tales about Mother Goose: but tragedies demand the fire of youth; and,unluckily, I have none but what is in my chimney."-The next letter begins" My great actor," &c. Here he complains of an erroneous passage in a new edition of Adelaide, which is neither French in the construction, nor intelligible in the sense. " I have written (he says) many bad verses in my time, but, thank God! I have not to reproach myself with these."

In 1770, he thus commences a letter: "My very great

and very dear support of expiring tragedy, it was said in the

King's apartments that you were dead: but, thank God, I find that you are still living.-Truth is seldom heard in a royal residence."-A subsequent letter gives a character of Madame du Deffant, the great friend of the late Lord Orford.—In 1776, he speaks of a petite apoplexie, which had deranged him, body and soul: but, afterward, he says; "I have worked night and day at a new tragedy, notwithstanding my bad health."

Most of the poet's letters turn wholly on the subject of corrections and changes in his latter plays, which, as their success was not brilliant, have been little read; and therefore this correspondence will not be very amusing. Now and then, however, a happy expression escapes from the old bard, who could not suppress his propensity to wit, even were he so inclined.This literary intercourse between Voltaire and LEKAIN Continued till the year of both their deaths, 1778.

Prince Henry of Prussia began a correspondence with the Tragedian in 1769. One of the Prince's letters, dated Berlin 1771, was sent by Salomon, for whom it bespeaks a regard which is very honourable to the talents of that excellent per

former:

"Sir,

The bearer of this note, Mr. Salomon, my first Violin, intending to pass some time in Paris, I am very glad to procure for him the acquaintance of a man of such distinguished talents as you possess. He will tell you how much I constantly interest myself in your prosperity, and in all that can contribute to it; being, with the most perfect esteem,

Your very affectionate

HENRY."

By another epistle from this Prince, dated in 1775, it appears that LEKAIN had formed the design of going to Berlin; and the Prince names the plays in which it was wished that he would appear at Potzdam and Rheinsberg: but in the next we find that this tour was frustrated by various adverse circumstances, in that year. From another, however, in 1777, we learn that it had been accomplished, from the Prince's encomiums on, and admiration of, his talents; and from his expressions of the pleasure which, he says, he had received from them at Rheinsberg.

The letters of our admirable countryman Garrick, to his brother Rescius, are only friendly and civil; indeed, there was neither opportunity nor occasion for him to manifest that wit, humour, and ingenuity of thought, in a foreign language, which he could not restrain in his own. In 1765, it appears that LEKAIN came to England, in hopes of seeing Garrick on the stage in some of his capital parts: but unluckily he was

gone

gone to Bath for his health, and we believe that they did not

meet.

Several letters from M. la Harpe, written while he was on a visit at Ferney, exhibit his usual spirit. One from Mademoiselle Clairon, on theatrical cabals, also occurs; and another from Ferney in 1765, where she acted, on Voltaire's stage, the principal female parts in all his best plays.

LEKAIN himself (p. 326.) gives a very modest and interesting account of his own reception at Ferney in 1756; and of the poet's rage on his mistaking the part of Gengiskin in the Orphan of China. We should have inserted this narrative, if our pages would have admitted it at present.

The Remonstrances from LEKAIN to Monsieur de Sartine, to the Duke de Richelieu, and to the Duke de Duras, on the subject of his imprisonment, and that of the whole company of the King's comedians, in Fort P'Evèque, are expressed with firmness, and are curious as coming from an actor during the old monarchy. This tragic hero, indeed, was by nature an intrepid and steady character, free from frivolity and caprice; by art and study he had acquired dignity; and he had, perhaps, imbibed also some ideas of self-importance, from the characters which he had so often represented. He never totally quitted the truncheon or the diadem, any more than his tragic partner, Mademoiselle Clairon, laid aside her regal state. Neither of them had that flexibility of character which was possessed by Mr. Garrick, who could set the Green-room in a roar of laughter, between the acts of his deepest tragic parts. Neither does LEKAIN seem to have been gifted with any original ideas in drawing up his addresses delivered to the audience, at the opening and close of the theatre; which are so extremely humble, and so full of compliment and adulation, that they would have been deemed fulsome by an English audience. "The Theatre Françoise (he says) constitutes their chief national glory in the eyes of other people, as it is become the theatre of Europe, and of the universe."

Various other letters addressed by several personages to the hero of these memoirs, and his answers, are inserted: but we have not room to particularize them; nor do they call for especial notice.

On the whole, we have been somewhat disappointed in perusing the present volume. We found materials towards a life of this celebrated actor, but no regular series of incidents, nor even of professional transactions. It includes original discourses, and occasional writings, by LEKAIN and by others: but they are detached, and unconnected either by notes or by re narks on their failure or success. The pieces written by

himself