BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE LATE F. J. TALMA. 64<3 



tion he gave of Rousseau it was the " Philosopher of Geneva" him- 

 self. The actor might almost have set as the original of the portraits 

 we have of him, so exact was the similitude. Owing to a dispute 

 among the actors themselves,, which deprived the public of Talma's 

 services in this part for a while, the tragedy of Charles IX. was 

 shelved till the general voice re-called the young actor to the station 

 he was so well qualified to filL He had now seceded from the 

 Theatre du Faubourg, St. Germain, to that of the Rue de Richelieu. 

 Chenier, who had warmly espoused the cause of Talma in these 

 internal brawls, again entrusted him with the principal character in 

 his tragedy of Henry VIII., which was represented for the first time 

 on the 2d of May, 1791, at the Rue de Richelieu, and it has ever 

 since maintained the station on the boards it then acquired. But, 

 although the public voice rewarded our aspirant's efforts with the 

 most unconstrained applause, yet there were not wanted critics 

 severe enough to censure, what they termed, his faults, and to scan 

 even his beauties with no lenient tongue. But the public welcome 

 consoled him for the ungenerous attacks of private enemies; and he 

 pursued, with a firm and steady step, the path he had thus success- 

 fully entered upon. 



The characters in which he now shone most were such as required 

 the expression of the deeper feelings and more violent passions of the 

 human breast; though he threw light upon whatever he undertook. 

 " Nihil tetigit, quod non ornavit." But in Brutus, in the death of 

 Caesar, in the tragedies of Arnault, and especially in the translations 

 of Shakspeare by Ducis, he left all competition far behind. Till the 

 retirement of Larive, he complied with the established custom of the 

 theatre, in performing comedy in conjunction with tragedy ; and 

 herein he displayed no small portion of comic humour. It would 

 exceed our limits to follow this great actor through those several 

 characters which his genius made his own. Talma displayed, in his 

 portraiture of Roman dignity and pride, a striking knowledge of 

 human nature, and of the peculiarities of the Roman character ; it 

 seemed that he brought, as it were, in actual review before the 

 spectator's eye the portraits of the persons he represented ; and that 

 he looked, talked and moved as they themselves might be supposed 

 to have done, under similar circumstances and in similar situations. 

 But of all the characters of Shakspeare made known to the French 

 nation through the medium of the translations of Ducis, the master- 

 piece of Talma's acting was Hamlet. On the French stage, the 

 ghost of Hamlet's father is not actually seen, but raised by and in 

 the imagination of the actor. The expression of his finely-marked 

 countenance told you, at this juncture, more forcibly than even the 

 eloquence of his lips or the energy of his action, of the phantom 

 which affrighted him. When, in the midst of his calm and melan- 

 choly musings, his father's spectre rises before him, he followed with 

 his eyes all the imagined movements of the vision he had conjured 

 up, the spectator was so strongly enchained by the delusion, that 

 spell-bound, he no longer doubted the reality of that which was the 

 mere coining of the actor's excited imagination. When, too, Hamlet* 



