l'autre._ After a conscientious inquiry into the authorities for an
assertion so very improbable, and yet so boldly made, I can only find one
passage in Quinctilian, lib. xi. cap. 3, and an allusion of Platonius
still more vague. (Vide _Aristoph. ed. Kuster, prolegom._ p. x.) Both
passages refer only to the new comedy, and only amount to this, that in
some characters the eyebrows were dissimilar. As to the intention of this,
I shall say a word or two hereafter, when I come to consider the new Greek
comedy. Voltaire, however, is without excuse, as the mention of the
cothurnus leaves no doubt that he alluded to tragic masks. But his error
had probably no such learned origin. In most cases, it would be a
fruitless task to trace the source of his mistakes. The whole description
of the Greek tragedy, as well as that of the cothurnus in particular, is
worthy of the man whose knowledge of antiquity was such, that in his Essay
on Tragedy, prefixed to _Brutus_, he boasts of having introduced the
Roman Senate on the stage in _red mantles_. No; the countenance remained
from beginning to end the very same, as we may see from the ancient masks
cut out in stone. For the expression of passion, the glances of the eye,
the motion of the arms and hands, the attitudes, and, lastly, the tones of
the voice, remained there. We complain of the loss of the play of the
features, without reflecting, that at such a great distance, its effect
would have been altogether lost.

We are not now inquiring whether, without the use of masks, it may not be
possible to attain a higher degree of separate excellence in the mimetic
art. This we would very willingly allow. Cicero, it is true, speaks of the
expression, the softness, and delicacy of the acting of Roscius, in the
same terms that a modern critic would apply to Garrick or Schroder. But I
will not lay any stress on the acting of this celebrated player, the
excellence of which has become proverbial, because it appears from a
passage in Cicero that he frequently played without a mask, and that this