try, by his mother, who shone in
private theatricals; and having been afterwards prepared for the stage,
and hourly tutored by Mr. Hough, an excellent preceptor. By his father
too, who is one of the best fencers in Europe, he was improved in
gracefulness of attitude--and nature had uncommonly endowed him for the
reception of those instructions. Of such means of improvement Master
Payne was wholly destitute, for there was not a man that we could hear
of in America who was at once capable and willing to instruct him.
Self-dependent and self-taught as he must be, we could see no feasible
means by which he could evolve his powers, be they what they might, to
adequate effect for the stage. We deemed it scarcely possible that he
could have got rid of the innumerable provincialisms which must cling to
his youth: and we laid our account at the best with meeting a fine
forward boy who would speak, perhaps not very well either, by rote; and
taking the most prominent favourite actor of his day, as a model, be a
mere childish imitator. We considered that when young people do any
thing with an excellence disproportioned to their years, they are viewed
through a magnifying medium; and that being once seen to approach to the
perfection of eminent adults, they are, by a transition sufficiently
easy to a wondering mind, readily concluded to excel them. Thus Betty
was said to surpass Kemble and Cooke; and thus young Payne was roundly
asserted to surpass Cooper and Fennell. Such were the feelings and
opinions with which we met Master Payne on his first appearance, for
which the tragedy of Douglas was judiciously selected; and we own that
the first impression he made upon our minds was favourable to his
talents in this way: He appeared to be just of that age which we should
think least advantageous to him; too young to enforce approbation by
robust manly exertion of talents; too far advanced to win over the
judgment by tenderness; or by a manifest disproportion between his age
and his efforts, to excite that astonishment which, however shortlived,
is, while it lasts, despotic over the understanding. Labouring,
therefore, under most of the disadvantages without any of the
advantages of puerility, candor and common sense pronounced at once that
much less of the estimation in which he was held, was to be ascribed to
his boyishness, and of course much more to his talents than we had been
led to imagine. If, therefore, he got through the characte