640 

 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE LATE F. J. TALMA. 



THE stage has ever exercised a powerful influence over the man- 

 ners, feelings, and character of a people, and, if left free and uncon- 

 strained, must ever form the strongest incentive to high aspirings, 

 noble daring, and lofty, virtuous sentiment. In proportion as this 

 idea has been prevalent with its rulers, has the drama of a nation 

 influenced the national opinion; and in such ratio has that people 

 been renowned for the cultivation of, and excellence in, the arts 

 conducive to its improvement, and, consequently, to its happiness. 

 The professors of this mightiest, " youngest of the sister arts/' have 

 accordingly, wherever they have attained to anything like excellence 

 in its practice, been admired and courted alike by the accom- 

 plished and the illiterate, the high and the low ; all ranks have 

 acknowledged, and paid homage to, the master-mind that has been 

 able to portray, in their every variation, the feelings and the pas- 

 sions of our varying, subtle, yet powerful nature. 



The death of Garrick was said to have eclipsed the gaiety of a 

 nation. All Paris mourned the loss of Talma of him who, for 

 nearly forty years, had been the pride and glory of their stage the 

 representative of heroes. He had roused the warm and generous 

 feelings of the young, and deterred them, by his powerful delinea- 

 tions of crime, "from its dark and fatal paths the old had had their 

 young remembrances refreshed at the fountain of his genius, who 

 was at once the representative and the associate of heroes, of states- 

 men, and of kings. 



Francis Joseph Talma was born at Paris, on the 15th of January, 

 1763; his earlier years were passed in England, at which time his 

 father practised as a dentist in London. Here young Talma remained, 

 till he had completed his ninth year, when he returned to Paris ; and 

 where he was put to a school in the Jardin du Roi, on the spot where 

 afterwards stood the house inhabited by the celebrated naturalist, 

 Buffon. It was customary at this school, at the annual distribution 

 of the prizes, for the scholars to give recitations, and even, occa- 

 sionally, to represent theatrical pieces. On one of these occasions, 

 young Talma was entrusted with a part requiring both pathos and 

 energy. His features, even at this early age, were expressive and 

 marked ; his figure was pleasing, and his action and manner gene- 

 rally were graceful. He was listened to with the attention such 

 attributes command, on an occasion so naturally interesting, from an 

 audience composed principally of the relations and friends of the 

 young Roscius. Talma was acquitting himself most satisfactorily, 

 when, coming to a particular passage, deeply descriptive of the feel- 

 ings of the person he was representing, he was perceived suddenly 

 to falter in his speech, his knees tottered beneath him, his counte- 

 nance expressed the strongest marks of sorrow, and, bursting into a 

 flood of tears, he fell fainting upon the floor. The passage that had 

 so powerfully affected him was descriptive of the death of a friend, 



