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or unfinished mind, which, for want of discrimination to point out the particular beauties it affects to admire, accomplishes its will by a sweeping wholesale term of comparison, more injurious to him they praise than to him they slight. Nay, so far has this been carried, that some who never were out of the limits of this union have, by a kind of telescopical discernment, viewed Cooke and Kemble in comparison with their new favourite, and found them quite deficient. We cannot readily forget one circumstance: a person said to another in our hearing at the playhouse, “You have been in England, sir, don’t you think Master Payne superior to young Betty?” “I don’t know, sir, having never seen Master Betty,” answered the man; “I think he is very much superior,” replied the former – “You have seen Master Betty then, sir,” said the latter; “No, I never did,” returned he that asked the first question, “but I am sure of it – I have heard a person that was in England say so!!” – This was the pure effusion of a mind subdued to prostration by wonder. In England this was carried to such lengths, that the panegyrists of young Betty seemed to vie with each other in fanatical admiration of that truly extraordinary boy. One, in a public print, went so far as to assert, that Mr. Fox (who, as well as Mr. Pitt, was at young Betty’s benefit when he played Hamlet) declared the performance was little, if at all, inferior to that of his deceased friend Garrick. With the very same breath in which we read the paragraph we declared it to be a falsehood. Mr. Fox had too much judgment to institute the comparison – Mr. Fox had too much benignity to utter such a malicious libel upon that noble boy.
