Potier, generally speaking--and it is the same with our own Liston--has
never Actually observed any thing of what he presents to us. It is the
spontaneous effusion of his own feelings--the immediate creation of his
own mind--frequently arising at the moment at which we see it, and
therefore never to be seen a second time--but always generated by the
actor himself, and never mixed up with any thing else of an extraneous
nature. This is one cause of the extraordinary variety of this actor,
and consequently of his extraordinary popularity in his own country. We
never tire of going to see him, because he is never the same on any two
nights--or rather he never performs the same character twice in the same
manner. It is also the secret of his unrivalled originality. There are
but very few characters in which he can repeat himself, even if he
would. And those are such as depend for their comicality upon collateral
circumstances connected with them, rather than upon any thing essential
to themselves.
There are some persons whose every look, feature, expression, and tone
of voice conduce to comic effects; and many an actor has owed his
success more to these than to any mental qualities or dispositions
corresponding with them; or has even been successful in spite of these
latter being in no degree adapted to the profession which circumstances
have induced him to adopt. In proof of this fact, comic actors are quite
as often dull and solemn people, as droll ones, in private life. The
most remarkable instance of a face being a fortune, in this respect, is
our own Liston. If he had not possessed a comic countenance, nothing
could have prevented him from being a tragic actor, or have made him a
comic one; for it is well understood that all his inclinations led him
in that direction. The truth is, that Liston's style of acting is too
chaste and natural to have been so universally popular as it is, but for
the irresistible drollery of his features--which are the finest farce
that ever was written. Now in this respect, as in all others, Potier
differs from his contemporaries.
His voice, his face, and his person altogether, are in themselves
antidotes to mirth, and might almost be supposed to set it at defiance.
He might play the _Apothecary_, in _Romeo and Juliet_, or the _Anatomie
Vivante_, without painting for them--as Stephen Kemble used to play
their antithesis, _Falstaff_, without stuffing. And yet, instead of this
seeming contradiction counteracting the essentially comic turn of his
mind, the latter is so completely paramount, that it changes every thing
within its reach to its own complexion.--_New Monthly Magazine._
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