smiled, with good-natured superiority. This nettled the young gentleman,
he fired up, his handsome countenance glowed, he turned Demosthenes for
her he loved. One advantage he had over both Cibber and Pomander, a fair
stock of classical learning; on this he now drew.

"Other actors and actresses," said he, "are monotonous in voice,
monotonous in action, but Mrs. Woffington's delivery has the compass and
variety of nature, and her movements are free from the stale uniformity
that distinguishes artifice from art. The others seem to me to have but
two dreams of grace, a sort of crawling on stilts is their motion, and an
angular stiffness their repose." He then cited the most famous statues of
antiquity, and quoted situations in plays where, by her fine dramatic
instinct, Mrs. Woffington, he said, threw her person into postures
similar to these, and of equal beauty; not that she strikes attitudes
like the rest, but she melts from one beautiful statue into another; and,
if sculptors could gather from her immortal graces, painters, too, might
take from her face the beauties that belong of right to passion and
thought, and orators might revive their withered art, and learn from
those golden lips the music of old Athens, that quelled tempestuous mobs,
and princes drunk with victory.

Much as this was, he was going to say more, ever so much more, but he
became conscious of a singular sort of grin upon every face; this grin
made him turn rapidly round to look for its cause. It explained itself at
once; at his very elbow was a lady, whom his heart recognized, though her
back was turned to him. She was dressed in a rich silk gown, pearl white,
with flowers and sprigs embroidered; her beautiful white neck and arms
were bare. She was sweeping up the room with the epilogue in her hand,
learning it off by heart; at the other end of the room she turned, and
now she shone full upon him.