the most
pathetic expression, injuriously to the great power of
theatrical declamation; because the great effect and charm of
the moment is, evidently, the more likely to be produced by
attitudes or gestures alone, unseconded by the voice; for that
the pleasure of the spectator will have been the greater for the
quickness of his apprehension not having needed that help to
understand the meaning of them. And this is so true of the force
of impression depending on that part of bodily eloquence, that
even in oratory, action was, by one of the greatest judges of
that art, pronounced to be the most essential part of it.

This may be, perhaps, an exaggeration: but when people resort to
a theatre to unbend, or relax, they will hardly think their
pleasure tastelesly diversified by a fine pantomime execution of
a dramatic composition, to the perfection of which, poetry,
music, painting, decoration, and machinery will have all
contributed their respective contingents.

For the subjects of these poetical dances, the composer will
undoubtedly find those which are the most likely to please, in
fabulous history, especially for the serious, or pathetic stile.
This we find was the great resource of the antients, who had, in
that point, a considerable advantage, from which the moderns are
excluded, by the antient mithology having lost that effect, and
warmth of interest, which accompanied all transactions taken
from it by their poets, and brought upon the theatre. The heroes
of antiquity, the marvellous of their deities, and the histories
of their amours, or of their exploits, can never make the same
impression on the moderns so thoroughly differing in manners and
ways of thinking, from those, to whom such exhibitions were a
kind of domestic, and even religious remembrancers. The
spectators of those times were more at home to what they saw
represented upon their theatres; the ground-work of the fable
represented to the audience being generally foreknown,
contributed greatly to the quickness of their apprehension; and
its being part of their received theology, and often of the
history of their own country, procured it the more favorable
attention.

The greatest part of these advantages are wanting in the
employment of these fictions among the moderns; and to which
however they are, in some measure, compelled to have recourse,
for want of theatrical subjects striking enough to be agreeably
thrown into a dance; by which I do not me