is mind, you are not prepared for the
vehemence and suddenness of his gestures; his pauses are long, abrupt,
and unaccountable, if not filled up by the expression; it is in the
working of his face that you see the writhing and coiling up of the
passions before they make their serpent-spring; the lightning of his eye
precedes the hoarse burst of thunder from his voice.

One may go into the boxes, indeed, and criticise acting and actors with
Sterne's stop-watch, but not otherwise--'"And between the nominative
case and the verb (which, as your lordship knows, should agree together
in number, person, etc.) there was a full pause of a second and
two-thirds."--"But was the eye silent--did the look say nothing?" "I
looked only at the stop-watch, my lord."--"Excellent critic!"'--If any
other actor, indeed, goes to see Mr. Kean act, with a view _to avoid
imitation,_ this may be the place, or rather it is the way to run into
it, for you see only his extravagances and defects, which are the most
easily carried away. Mr. Mathews may translate him into an AT HOME even
from the _slips!_--Distinguished actors, then, ought, I conceive, to set
the example of going into the pit, were it only for their own sakes. I
remember a trifling circumstance, which I worked up at the time into
a confirmation of this theory of mine, engrafted on old prejudice and
tradition.(2) I had got into the middle of the pit, at considerable
risk of broken bones, to see Mr. Kean in one of his early parts, when I
perceived two young men seated a little behind me, with a certain space
left round them. They were dressed in the height of the fashion, in
light drab-coloured greatcoats, and with their shirt-sleeves drawn down
over their hands, at a time when this was not so common as it has since
become. I took them for younger sons of some old family at least. One of
them, that was very good-looking, I thought might be Lord Byron, and
his companion might be Mr. Hobhouse. They seemed to have wandered from
another sphere of this our planet to witness a masterly performance to
the utmost advantage. This stamped the thing. They were, undoubtedly,
young men of rank and fashion; but their taste was greater than their
regard for appearances. The pit was, after all, the true resort of
thoroughbred critics and amateurs. When there was anything worth seeing,
this was the place; and I began to feel a sort of reflected importance
in the consciousness that I also was a critic. Nob