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In recalling to mind my plan of study, I hope I shall be pardoned for observing, that I have often smiled at the folly of those who have upbraided me for having recourse to art. Alas! what should I have been without it? Could I have personated Roxane, Amenaïde, or Viriate? Should I be consistent if I was to apply my own feelings and habits to such characters? Doubtless not.—How am I enabled to substitute the ideas, sentiments, and feelings, which should distinguish those characters, in lieu of my own? It is by art alone it can be done: for if ever I have seemed to personate them in a manner purely natural, it is because my studies, joined to some happy gifts which I may have derived from nature, have conducted me to the perfection of art.
