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Pity it should have no Brains. And the Story goes on ve-ry well, as Æsop tells It, because a Head is made to haveBrains ; but there is no Wit in faying it of a Mask, orof a mere Face, which is not made to have any . Is therefase in thus altering a Fable f But with all due Respect:to this Critick, the Masks of which Phoedrus speaks werethe lame with the Head in Æsop. They covered thewhole Head of the Actor, and so seemed made to haveBrains. This one may fee upon looking into the ancientManuscript os Terence, in the King’s Library, or into Ma-dam D' Acier s Terence.

Another Advantage of Masks consisted in this, that bythe help os them, Hypolitus, Hercules, and Neft or neverappeared upon the Stage but with Heads suitable to theirknown Characters. The Visages of the Actors were al-ways conformable to their Parts; and thus one never sawan old, wrinkled, wore-out Actor, play the Part of ayoung, fresh, amorous, handsome Gallant; or a Come-dian act the honest Man with the Face os a compleatVillain. Every Mask, in one Word, expressed some par-ticular Character in so lively a manner, that the Maskno sooner appeared, than the Character to be reprelentedwas known. This we learn from ^uintilian{a). AndPollux tells us the same. The latter speaking of Masks in

Tragedy,

(a) Itaque in ils quae ad scenam componuntur fabulis artifices pronuntiandia perfonis quoque affectus mutuantur, ut sit Niobe in tragoedia tristis, atrox Me-dea, attonitus A]ax, truculentus Hercules. In comoediis vero praeter aliamobservationem qua servi, lenones, parasiti, rustici, vetulae, meretriculae, ancil-lae, fenes austeri ac mites, juvehes severi ac luxuriosi, matronae, puellae, interse discernuntur ; patet site cujus praecipuae partes sunt, quia interim concitatus,interim lenis est, alteroerecto, altero composite est superciiio. Atqueid osten-dere maxims Latinis actoribus moris est quod cum iis quas agunt partibus con-g rua t. Quint il. Inst.L. n. c. z.