ympathise.

His attitudes and action are uncommonly striking, seldom in the
exaggeration of the French stage, and never running into that immoderate
expression of passion in which dignity of character is necessarily
sacrificed. Talma appears to understand the use and management of action
better than any actor on the French stage; and though at times some
prominent faults, inseparable, perhaps, from the character of the plays
in which he is compelled to perform, may be observable; yet, in general,
his action appears to possess a power and expression beyond what is
attempted by any actor on the English stage.

Nothing can be conceived apparently so inconsistent with the character
of the French plays, as the manner in which they are delivered. The
harangues, which are tedious to many when read, might probably be very
uninteresting to all when performed, if delivered with that unbending
and unimpassioned declamation, which seems to suit "their stately march
and long resounding lines:" to a French audience, in particular, such
representations would be intolerable, and the actors, accordingly, have
been led to perform them with a degree of energy and passion which they
do not appear intended to admit, but which was necessary, perhaps, to
awaken those emotions which it must be more or less the object of
theatrical representations to excite, wherever they are to be performed
to all classes of mankind. As might have been foreseen, the French
actors, compelled to counterfeit a degree of warmth and feeling which
was not suggested by the sentiments they utter, or the language they
employ, have fallen very naturally into the error of making the
expression of passion immoderately vehement; and thus, when not guided
by the language they are to use, have become not only indiscriminate in
the introduction of violent emotion, but often run into a degree of
warmth, totally destructive of every feeling of propriety and dignity.

The striking circumstance in Talma's acting is, that he alone seems to
know how to act the French plays with all the feeling and interest which
can be necessary to produce effect; and at the same time, to avoid that
exaggerated representation of passion which represses the very emotions
it is intended to excite. The means by which the genius of this great
actor has accomplished so important an effect, and overcome the
difficulties which seem insuperable to the rest of his countrymen,
afford the best illustration