come from him extempore, and sharpened into more wit from his brilliant manner of delivering it; he had himself a good share of it, or what is equal to it, so lively a pleasantness of humour, that when either of these fell into his hands upon the stage, he wantoned with them to the highest delight of his auditors.  The agreeable was so natural to him, that even in that dissolute character of the Rover, he seemed to wash off the guilt from vice, and gave it charms and merit; for though it may be a reproach to the poet to draw such characters, not only unpunished, but rewarded, the actor may still be allowed his due praise in his excellent performance; and this was a distinction which, when this comedy was acted at Whitehall, King William’s Queen Mary was pleased to make in favour of Mountford, notwithstanding her disapprobation of the play; which was heightened by the consideration of its having been written by a lady, viz.  Mrs. Behn, from whom more modesty might have been expected.

’He had, besides all this, a variety in his genius, which few capital actors have shewn, or perhaps have thought it any addition of their merit to arrive at; he could entirely change himself, could at once throw off the man of sense, for the brisk, vain, rude, lively coxcomb, the false, flashy pretender to wit, and the dupe of his own sufficiency; of this he gave a delightful instance, in the character of Sparkish, in Wycherley’s Country Wife:  in that of Sir Courtly Nice, by Crown, his excellence was still greater; there his whole man, voice, mien, and gesture, was no longer Mountford, but another person; there, the insipid, soft civility, the elegant and formal mien, the drawling delicacy of voice, the stately flatness of his address, and the empty eminence of his attitudes, were so nicely observed, that had he not been an entire matter of nature, had he not kept his judgment, as it were a centinel upon himself, not to admit the least likeness of what he used to be, to enter into any part of his performance, he could not possibly have so compleatly finished it.’

Mr. Cibber further observes, that if, some years after the death of Mountford, he himself had any success in those parts, he acknowledges the advantages he had received from the just idea, and strong impressions from Mountford’s acting them.’  ’Had he been remembered (says he) when I first attempted them, my defects would have been more easily discovered, and consequently my favourable reception in them must have been very much, and justly abated.  If it could be remembered, how much he had the advantage of me in voice and person, I could not here be suspected of an affected modesty, or overvaluing his excellence; for he sung a clear, counter-tenor, and had a melodious, warbling throat, which could not but set off the last scene of Sir Courtly with uncommon happiness, which I, alas! could only struggle through, with the faint excuses, and real confidence of a fine singer, under the imperfection of a feigned, and screaming treble, which, at least, could only shew you. what I would have done, had nature been more favourable to me.’