These did not arise
from the drama, but were elsewhere cogitated, and were interleaved, as it
were, with the farce or comedy which served as an excuse for their
display. The actor was to all intents and purposes _sui generis_.
To speak of my own impressions, Munden did not affect me much in some of
his earlier performances; for then he depended on the play. Afterwards,
when he took the matter into his own hands, and created personages who
owed little or nothing to the playwright, then he became an inventor. He
rose with the occasion. _Sic ivit ad astra_. In the drama of "Modern
Antiques," especially, space was allowed him for his movements. The words
were nothing. The prosperity of the piece depended exclusively on the
genius of the actor. Munden enacted the part of an old man credulous
beyond ordinary credulity; and when he came upon the stage there was in
him an almost sublime look of wonder, passing over the scene and people
around him, and settling apparently somewhere beyond the moon. What he
believed in, improbable as it was to mere terrestrial visions, you at once
conceived to be quite possible,--to be true. The sceptical idiots of the
play pretend to give him a phial nearly full of water.
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