The stings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Moved solely by this reasoning, without having suffered any "stings or arrows" that we know of, he resolved, in common, as we remember, for the book is not now before us, with a whole club of young literati, to "shuffle off this mortal coil." Luckily for the admirers of his writings, Goethe, when he formed this decision, decided farther, that no one was worthy of making so dignified an end, who could not execute his purpose with the tranquil deliberation of the Emperor Otho, who calmly stabbed

himself, after passing a convivial evening with his friends. Accordingly he provided a sharp dagger, which he deposited by his bedside, and every night during many months, after duly spending the preparatory convivial evening, he endeavoured to stab himself. But it would not do! His

hand proved "infirm of purpose," and never could make the steel pene trate his skin. Goethe humbly ac knowledged his moral inferiority to Otho, and, abandoning the attempt in despair, made up his mind to commit that suicide by deputy, which he had failed to accomplish in propriâ personâ; THE SORROWS OF WERTER were the fruit of this new determination. The second experiment succeeded better than the former, and his equally philo sophical and heroical enterprize being thus vicariously achieved, his thoughts and wishes never afterwards reverted to the subject of Felo de se.

AMONG the innumerable panegyrics of our innumerable tourists, on the spirit, intelligence, and novelty of Talma's acting, I have seen but little that gave me any knowledge of this extraordinary man's career, the models on which he might be presumed to have formed his style, or the general progress of his powers and successes.

Yet it is upon such things that men feel an interest. To know how a great actor earned or spent a great income, is altogether immaterial, compared with the knowledge of those means and events which nerved a vigorous mind with additional vigour, and raised an individual, undistinguished by family or fortune, to a place among the conspicuous names of Europe.

Talma is entitled to the highest praise of the stage. He has been for thirty years at the head of acting in France. Among the cloud of aspirants, no man has approached him; he has had no equal, even no rival, almost no remote competitor. The forms of the French stage doubtless prohibit the rapid emulation of the English; and the most vivid spirit must not trespass on the routine, which gives the superior opportunities to the older performers. But eminent powers will show themselves. Talma, almost at his entrance into theatrical life, made his

S. A.

strength felt, obtained his rank, and has from that hour kept it without fear of change.

It is not national partiality to say, that Talma's genius, if it was born in France, was trained in England; that without his knowledge of the English stage, he would not have been the regenerator of the French; and that Siddons and Kemble taught him the use of his talents, as Shakspeare, even mutilated by Ducis, gave them his favourite and most triumphant distinction.

Talma was born in Paris about the year 1770. He was remarked as an intelligent and peculiarly sensitive child. It was customary in the French schools, as here, to perform a little theatrical piece on the breaking up for the holidays. Talma, then a child of eight years old, played in one of those plays, on the story of Tamerlane. His part was that of a confident, who closed the play by announcing to Tamerlane the death of his son, the bosom friend of the reciter. The child's story was told in a burst of real sorrow, which surprised the audience. However, the curtain fell; and the little actors had dispersed to get rid of their robes, when Talma was missed, and was not found till after some search in a cor ner, still wrapped in his robe of tra

gedy, and weeping bitterly at the misfortune of the imperial dynasty. He would scarcely receive comfort, and was for a week ill in consequence of his loyal sorrows.

His father, who lived in London, a goldsmith, I believe, now sent for him, and the future Roscius of France was, after a few years spent at a boardingschool in the classic neighbourhood of Lambeth, articled to a surgeon. His theatrical propensities, however, had made themselves so well known among the foreigners in London, that Sir John Gallini-the Albert of his day, then superintending an amateur French Company, at the Hanover Square Rooms-applied to Talma, and he played in a whole succession of comedies; among others, in Beaumarchais, Barber of Seville, then at the height of its fame, in which Talma sustained the Count Almaviva. The success of these performances induced Gallini to enter upon the larger speculation in bringing over an occasional Paris meteor; and as Talma had some accidental business in Paris, he was commissioned to engage Molè and Mademoiselle Contat, then both at the height of their fame, to give scenes at his theatre. The negotiator was unsuccessful; for the superintendance of the government over those "chartered libertines" was then of the same stern order, which indulges us with only a fortnight of Pasta at a time, and hurries off Albert and Paul from our disappointed eyes with the rapidity of one of their own pirouettes.

But the English stage was then in its glory-Siddons and Kemble were in their prime. The old absurdities of the atric costume had been cast away; Coriolanus and Macbeth fought, conquered, declaimed and died, no longer in a full-bottomed wig, a square-skirted coat, and rolled stockings; Desdemona and Rosalind were sad or merry, sighed or sang, no more in lappets and hoops. With the classic taste in costume, the classic taste in acting had been created, and the torpid dignity and formal declamation of the old stage, from which Garrick alone had emancipated himself, were abolished for simple and powerful nature.

The performance of those two preeminent leaders decided Talma's vocation. Unquestionably they formed his taste. He returned to Paris, and took a fresh and full review of all that was able or attractive in the national

companies. Their talent was then chiefly comic, as it has always been. But Molè the actor was forming a school for stage instruction. He was interested by the enthusiasm and genius of the young aspirant, and Talma became one of his earliest students. It was a regulation, that the students on the day of admission should give some proof of their qualities. Talma was at first overwhelmed by the appearance of the critical circle present to witness his recitation. But he rapidly recovered his self-possession, and finished with high applause.

The Theatre Francaise was an "Imperium in Imperio," under the old regime, or rather a severe oligarchy under a relaxed monarchy. The reception of plays, the engagement of actors, were all decided by a committee, and the decree of this secret Areopagus was stern and irreversible. Mole's influence, however, procured Talma permission to go through what is, in the language of this formidable legislature, called the order of the debuts.

His first appearance was in the part of Seide, in Voltaire's Mahomet. He was embarrassed, and but feebly received. He, however, went through his course; and at the close, the French critics had still to discover that a new light had risen among them: Talma was for some time returned to his studies, for a more regular attempt in his profession.

It is the custom of the Theatre Francaise to make every actor begin, as it is phrased, a la queue, at the bottom of the list. There is no springing over the heads of the old, whether established favourites or not; they have no actor of three weeks' fame bearing the majesty of King or Hero, where King or Hero are better than cyphers; no Richard more contemptuous of the public than his royal prototype; and no Macbeth murdering Macbeth still more mercilessly than Duncan. This system, which must so often depress a justified ambition, is the best expedient that the French can find to ensure tranquillity within that place, whose natural emblem is certainly not the olive; that arena of raw pretension, and superannuated vanity of boyish insolence, and veteran domination, the Green-room.

Talma began, like the rest, at the bottom of the list. His first part was the insignificant one of Argatiphonti

das, in Moliere's Amphytrion; and in this unimportant, yet painful course of characters, he continued for a period: : yet even in this, his natural talent burst out from time to time, and he began to be looked on, even in the fastidious French theatre, as an actor who might yet shake some of the heroes on their thrones.

Accident has its share in all fortunes, and Talma was lifted out of his subordination by one of these chances that come to all men, and are thrown away upon all but a man of genius.

Charles IX., a tragedy, by Chenier, was received, and ordered to be put in rehearsal. The author carried the principal part to Saintfal, the tragic despot of his day. In a week after, on Chenier's waiting with the humility of a French dramatist on the stage monarch, the part was returned to him, with the added sneer, that "if the author was determined on having it played, possibly young Talma would do it quite well enough."

Chenier was angry-but he had watched Talma's performance, and he took Saintfal at his word; Talma accepted the character with delight. The boldness of the attempt fixed the whole gaze of Parisian criticism on him; and this was equivalent to the whole gaze of Paris. Talma, who naturally felt that fate and fortune hung upon the night, studied his character with his entire soul; His taste in dress had been before remarked by the audience, but on this eventful night, he exceeded himself and all that had been seen on the stage, in fidelity and effect of costume. The old amateurs of the Parisian theatre, to whom a debut or a disgrace was the only theme that seemed worthy of the human tongue, talk to this hour of the splendid illusion of Talma's Charles: dress, attitude, gesture, even face, so struck them with the force of reality. It was Charles himself walking down from his pedestal or his picture; or rather, as they exclaimed, risen from his tomb! The tragedy triumphed, and the fame of the actor was sealed.

His reputation now grew rapidly; he was, in spite of ordonnances, in the first rank of his profession. The wits said, that he had "cleared Saintfal without touching him in the leap," and his performance of Othello placed him at that height, from which he

has never descended a step, and which has been, for almost thirty years, left to his sole possession.

A fortunate coincidence, had made M. Ducis translate some of Shakespeare's plays at the moment of the only actor's appearing who could feel their eloquence, grandeur, and nature. Yet Shakspeare, in his original power, has never pleased the French. They look upon his splendour and strength, as the first invaders of Mexico looked upon the native chieftains, covered with the rude gold and unpolished jewels of their land. They think his strength and his opulence alike savage, and think it their business to civilize him by robbing this illustrious barbarian of both.

M. Ducis laboured to reduce Shakspeare to the feebleness of French taste, and he in some degree succeeded. But no chains of French poetry could altogether break down the mighty sinews of the English giant, and there are passages remaining, even in the works of M. Ducis, that show the magnificent and terrible energies of Shakspeare.

In those passages Talma, educated in England, and first inflamed by the superb acting of Siddons and Kemble, burst out upon the coldness and fastidiousness of the French pit, with a force against which all critical scorn was helpless-he broke down all rules, and carried away his audience with a torrent of emotions new and strange to the French stage.

The French are notoriously delicate in murder, upon the stage! In the height of the Revolution, when the guillotine was permanently patriotic, and the judges fell asleep, wearied with signing sentences of bloodshed, a dagger lifted upon the stage would have thrown the whole mob of regenerators into hysterics.

On the first representation of Othello, the death of Desdemona before the audience raised an universal tumult. Tears, groans, and menaces resounded from all parts of the theatre, and what was still more demonstrative, and more alarming, several of the prettiest women in Paris fainted in the most conspicuous boxes, and were publicly carried out of the house. Ducis was alarmed for his tragedy, for his fame, and for his life. The author of so much public combustion might have

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been sent to expiate his temerity in the Bastile. He took the safer mode, and altered the catastrophe.

At the moment when Othello lifts the dagger over Hedelmone, (the name of Desdemona was too unmusical for Parisian ears,) Odalbert! the heroine's father; Loredan, and the Doge of Venice, rush in. The latter personage seizes the dagger, exclaiming,

"Malheureux, que fais-tu ? Tu vas de ce poignard immoler la vertu !"

The play was published with both catastrophes, for the Parisians to take their choice, and the coteries found an interesting and unending topic in the respective merits of the denouement funeste, and denouement heureux. But the actor, probably from his English education, was less tender, and more natural than his audience. The denouement heureux sat uneasily upon him; and a few nights after its adaption, as Ducis, the author, was passing behind the scenes, he saw Talma striding away in one of the dark passages, in full soliloquy.

Shall I kill her?-No, the audience will not suffer it! Yet, what do I care-I will kill her; they shall learn to suffer it-Yes, I have made up my mind-She must be killed!"

Ducis, who had stood aloof from the whirlwind of this debate, now came forward.

"What is the matter with you, Talma?"-"I am determined—I must put her to death!"-"I am of your opinion, Talma; but what then?""Her fate is fixed !"-" Then go through your determination !"

The actor went through with it, to the surprise of the general audience, and to the peculiar agonies of the most obviously handsome and fashionable; but there was so much truth and dramatic feeling in his perform ance, that the Death became the established mode, and Talma had all the honours of successful intrepidity. Incidents of this order may make no splendid materials of history, but when we recollect the despotism of the old French stage, and the solemn fierceness of that huge tribe of criticism, which included the court, the authorship, and the universal body of the educated idlers of Paris, a tribe whose whole existence was consumed in discussing the Le Kains and Clairons; in living from theatre to theatre, and in turning the most trivial

theatric event into the aliment of their conversational life; we may estimate the personal hardihood, or the strong and honourable reliance on his genius, which urged this great actor to the hazard of everything, in the cause of Nature and Shakspeare.

But the French, fond of classical allusion, observe that Talma's triumph was like that of the Roman generals he had his satyrists in his line of march. The principal of these habitual accompaniments of reputation was Geoffroi, a writer in one of the journals, a man advanced in life, acute, indefatigable, and envenomed. He flew at the high theatrical game, and while he kept himself out of the public prisons, or the Motraillades, by abstaining from politics, he gave himself full and mischievous indulgence in his criticisms on the persons and performances of the actors of the Française.

Some of those, whose fame had been already at its height, and who felt the sudden alarm of favourites suddenly shaken, gave way. Molè, the most graceful and captivating of the old school of France, abandoned the stage at once. Mademoiselle Contat followed; Larive, in the full possession of the "Pères Nobles," and the "Rois," entitled to carry all the sceptres and ermines of the theatre, by a law not less irrefragable than that which had kept the Capets on the scarcely more enviable throne, suddenly abdicated before the resistless invasion of this literary Napoleon.

But Talma, as the noblest victim, was the most constant. For ten years he was plagued by this invisible bloodsucker. His style was held up to public scorn, his English tastes were denounced as anti-patriotic, and his conceptions, as faithless to the laws of the national muse, more irreversible and slavish than the laws of the Medes and Persians.

The actor bore this with fierce impatience, but revenge was hopeless. At the end of the ten years, he unluckily saw M. Geoffroi in a box of the Française; and felt as Prometheus might have felt, with the vulture hovering above him. Talma gave way to his indignation, and rushed from the stage to the box. "Is M. Geoffroi here ?" was the inquiry; at the same time grasping his enemy, and dragging him towards the door. Geoffroi's wife screamed; there was, of

course, a general confusion, and Talma, with some exclamations of contempt, flung back the old critic to his

seat.

The next day, this maltreated censor was on safer ground; and, from his desk, he poured out a torrent of virulence on the aggressor. A paper war is easily made, and the French journals found this a valuable topic, in 1813.

Observations on the Imperial policy after the disasters of the Russian campaign, were delicate things, and the journalists accordingly made the most of the safer and not less interesting subject at home. Epigrams, replies, recapitulations, lampoons, crowded their columns. At length Talma addressed a letter to the Gazette de France and the Journal de l'Empire. This is curious, as perhaps the only instance of his authorship, which has transpired.

"SIR,-I return no answer to M. Geoffroi; but I feel that I owe some account of my conduct to the public.

"We have had many versions of the affair of Thursday last at the Theatre Française; I shall state shortly the true one. After having been for many years insulted by M. Geoffroi's observations; learning that he has for two years been indulged with the privilege of a box at the theatre, I cannot ascertain on what grounds, and peculiarly irritated at the time, by a recent article, in which he has exceeded all the bounds of legitimate criticism; struck, on seeing him in this box, with the sudden impression, that, malignantly insulted as I was, I was actually contributing to supply him with a place for the concoction of his invectives against me, I found it impossible to restrain my indignation. I entered the box to compel him to leave it, not to strike him, as he pretends. The irritation of the moment left me no time for considering either the place or the act which has given rise to this correspondence.

"But if M. Geoffroi thinks that I have ill-treated him, why does he not, instead of making himself at once judge and party in his own paper, bring the matter before the courts? It is there that I may answer, there that we may settle, whether I had a right or not to expel him from the box. Will he take his action?

"He will then give me the opporVOL. XVIII.

tunity that I desire, of showing, in the most public manner, the secret sources of his panegyric and libel. I am not the only one who longs for an opportunity to put him to shame, and who has the means. Persons, doubtless excusable, by their want of all possible public indulgence, for having purchased his silence, are ready to make discoveries which will embarrass M. Geoffroi. Those discoveries will decide many others, whose timidity he turns to profit, to join with me, and free themselves from the fear of his persecutions. I now publicly defy M. Geoffroi, and wait his further proceedings.

"It is doubtless painful to me to be compelled to trouble the public with matters of this kind. The public, however, will judge whether I am, as M. Geoffroi will have it, spoiled by flatterers; when, in a journal so widely circulated as his, I am perpetually assailed in the most offensive and unjustifiable manner. M. Geoffroi at least should allow that he has exerted a formidable counterbalance to this pretended adulation, in the bitterness of those criticisms, which I have patiently endured for upwards of ten years. And if, under these circumstances, I have given way to a first impulse, under a feeling of cutrageous offence, my real and only regret is, that of having for a moment forgotten that I was in the presence of that public, under whose eyes my feeble powers were formed, who have always honoured me with their indulgence, and to whom I owe all respect and gratitude.

"I have the honour to be, &c.
"TALMA."

To make this attempt on the person of the critic more intelligible, it is to be remembered, that the Theatre Française is in fact a partnership, in which the shares belong to the actor. Talma was therefore a proprietor, and the gallant actor's blood was doubly inflamed by the habitual insult and the temporary invasion of property. However, ill betides the man who proclaims war with a newspaper. Perpetual lampoons rained on Talma, the observations on his performance were of course ten times more violent than be fore; and what could be done, in the way of rejoinder, against a bitter, and certainly a clever assailant, entrenched up to the teeth, and who had every day of his life the opportunity of tao o