give way, and room, to your rash choler?
Shall I be frighted when a madman stares?

And a little after,

There is no terror, Cassius, in your looks! &c.

Not but in some part of this scene, where he reproaches _Cassius_, his
temper is not under this suppression, but opens into that warmth which
becomes a man of virtue; yet this is that _hasty spark_ of anger, which
Brutus himself endeavours to excuse.

"But with whatever strength of nature we see the poet show, at once, the
philosopher and the hero, yet the image of the actor's excellence will
be still imperfect to you, unless language could put colours in our
words to paint the voice with.

"_Et, si vis similem pingere, pinge sonum_, is enjoining an
impossibility. The most that a _Vandyke_ can arrive at, is to make his
portraits of great persons seem to _think_; a Shakspeare goes farther
yet, and tells you _what_ his pictures thought; a Betterton steps beyond
them both, and calls them from the grave, to breathe, and be themselves
again, in feature, speech, and motion. When the skilful actor shows you
all these powers at once united, and gratifies at once your eye, your
ear, your understanding. To conceive the pleasure rising from such
harmony, you must have been present at it! 'tis not to be told you!

"There cannot be a stronger proof of the charms of harmonious elocution,
than the many, even unnatural scenes and flights of the false sublime it
has lifted into applause. In what raptures have I seen an audience, at
the furious fustian and turgid rants in _Nat. Lee's Alexander the
Great_! for though I can allow this play a few great beauties, yet it is
not without its extravagant blemishes. Every play of the same author has
more or less of them. Let me give you a sample from this. Alexander, in
a full crowd of courtiers, without being occasionally called or provoked
to it, falls into this rhapsody of vainglory:

Can none remember? Yes, I know all must!

And therefore they shall know it again.

When Glory, like a dazzling eagle, stood
Perched on my beaver, in the Granic flood,
When Fortune's self, my standard trembling bore,
And the pale Fates stood frighted on the shore,
When the immortals on the billows rode,
And I myself appeared the leading god.

When these flowing numbers come from the mouth of a Betterton, the
multitude no more desired sense to them, than our musical connoisseurs
think it essential in the celebrated airs of an Italian