ABSTRACT
His powers often fail him in the flow of elocution, insomuch that he is forced to make restings in utterance where no stops are to be found in his authors. To a consciousness of this deficiency may be owing his rarely attempting of sublime characters; and which, when he does attempt, it may be observed that he never succeeds in them. He is neither graceful in his treading of the stage or his bodily deportment; he uses abundance of false action, such as moulding the habit on his stomach, catching at, and grasping the side of his robe; is mean in his approaches of love, and often aukwardly embarrassed with his hat. He lays frequent clap-traps in false pauses, stammerings, hesitations and repetitions; and uses pantomime tricks in affected agitations, tremblings and convulsions; he
overagonizes dying, and many ways debases his own excellencies to extort applause from the injudicious by methods that are offensive to the true judges of his art. (II, 58-9)
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No. 20 (26 January 1758) [On Garrick’s unwillingness to perform new plays]
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But time, the unraveller of all craft, clearly reveals at length, to the eye of observant candour, the various frauds and impostures practised by this tinsel tyrant of the stage, with wronging of the public and dishonouring of the age, to oppress or discourage able writers. This the weak and wilful conduct of a rival manager has enabled him with the greater ease and security to do, and his motives for such proceedings are too obvious to be mistaken, being no other than the prevention of rivalry in public regard from a display of superior genius, and the monopolizing of all theatrical profits to himself.
