is Talma alone who knows how to express,
what is so much more grand, the effects of long suffering; to remind you
of the misery he has endured by the spectacle of an exhausted frame and
broken spirit; and by exhibiting the overwhelming consequence of those
sufferings which the poet has not dared to describe, nor the actor
ventured to represent to interest the mind far more profoundly than any
representation of present passion could possibly effect. The influence
of the exertions of other actors is limited to the effects of the
emotions they represent, and of the suffering they exhibit: the genius
of Talma has imitated the efforts of ancient Greece in her matchless
sculpture, and, in every situation which put it within his power,
chosen, as the proper field for the display of the actor's powers, not
the mere representation of excess in suffering, but that moment of
greater interest, when the struggle of nature is past, and the mind has
sunk under the pressure of affliction, which no fortitude could sustain,
and which no ray of hope had cheered.

Every one knows the peculiar manner in which, in general, the verses of
the French tragedy are repeated, and the delight which the French people
take in the uniform and balanced modulation of voice with which they are
accompanied. In an ordinary actor, this peculiar tone is often, to many
foreigners, extremely fatiguing, but it is defended in France, as
securing a pleasure in some degree independent of the merits of the
actor, and defending the audience from the harshness of tone, and
extravagancies of accent, to which otherwise, in bad actors, they would
be exposed; and certainly no one can listen, in the National Theatre, to
the beautiful and splendid declamations of the most celebrated
compositions in French literature, delivered in the manner which has
been selected as best adapted to the character of the plays and the
taste of the people, with any feeling of indifference. In the skilful
hands of Talma, who preserves the beauty of the poetry nearly unimpaired
in the very _abandon_ of feeling, the French verse acquires beauties
which it never before could boast, and loses all that is harsh or
painful in the uniformity of its structure, or the monotony of
artificial taste. The description which Le Baron de Grimm has given of
Le Kain may be well applied to Talma. "Un talent plus precieux sans
doute et qu'il avait porte au plus haut degre c'etait celui de faire
sentir tout le cha