again. This brings us back to the mother, from whom I am pleased to part with a pleasanter incident. Dr. Delaney once sat enraptured, as he listened to her at Dublin, singing in the "Messiah;" and, as she ceased, he could not help murmuring on behalf of the accomplished singer, "Woman, thy sins be forgiven thee!" Amen! And so passes away "the fair Ophelia," in that character, at least, never to be equalled.

From Scotland Yard, where she died, the way was not long to Westminster Abbey Cloisters. With what rites she was committed to the earth, I cannot say; but a paper on the doors of the Roman Catholic Chapel, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, that day, requested you, "of your charity," to "pray for the soul of Mrs. Susanna Maria Cibber!"

Amen again! She was a woman more sinned against than sinning, and so well respected, that Mr. and Mrs. Garrick visited her and Mr. Sloper, at the country-house of the latter, at Woodhay; where Ophelia taught her parrot snatches of old tragedy, and exhibited the bird to her laughing friends. The highest salary this "Tragic Muse" ever received was £600 for sixty nights; and this £10 per night was often earned under such tremor and suffering, that Mrs. Cibber would exclaim, with the applause ringing in her ears, "Oh! that my nerves were made of cart-ropes!" But, we must leave her, for an actor who re-enters, and an actress who departs.

CHAPTER VI.

REAPPEARANCE OF SPRANGER BARRY.-RETIREMENT OF MRS.

PRITCHARD.

AFTER playing some nights at the Opera House, in 1766, and with Foote at the little house in the Haymarket, where Thalia and Melpomene reigned on alternate nights, in 1767, Barry and Mrs. Dancer, the former after an absence of ten years,-appeared at Drury Lane, in October of the last-named year. Direct rivalry with Garrick, there was none: for the latter and Mrs. Pritchard acted together on one night; Barry and Mrs. Dancer played their favorite characters the next; while King, Dodd, Palmer, Parsons, Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Clive, and Miss Pope, led in comedy. The two great tragedians acted in the same company till 1774, when Barry passed to Covent Garden, where he remained till his death, in 1777,—a few months only before that of Woodward, and about half a year subsequent to the retirement of Garrick, from Drury Lane and the stage.

"I hear the stage in England is worse and worse,' wrote Fox to Fitzpatrick, from Nice, in 1768. I do not know what foundation there was for such a report, save that the school of sentimental comedy had then come in and established itself, the founder being Kelly, an honest, clever, Irish ex-staymaker, and his essay being made with "False Delicacy" (Cecil, King; Lady Betty Lambton, Mrs. Abington). Mrs. Pritchard, too, had then just retired, leaving the tragic throne to be contended for by Mrs. Yates and Mrs. Dancer, who subsequently reigned as Mrs. Barry, and who, as Mrs. Crawford, was finally superseded by Mrs. Siddons.

So firmly as well as sudaenly had sentimental comedy come into fashion, that when Goldsmith's "Good-Natured Man” (Croaker,

Sauter; Honeywood, Powell-who disliked his part; Miss Richland, Mrs. Bulkley) was produced in 1768, at Covent Garden, it nearly failed, through the scene of the bailiffs, which was considered too farcical for genteel comedy! The age was rapidly becoming almost too fastidious. The reaction was carrying it too far; and the moral Mrs. Sheridan's first comedy, "The Dupe," was condemned, for offences which it was said to contain against decorum. Even Johnson disapproved of the bailiffs, in Goldsmith's comedy, though he was the first to enjoy the rich humor of the lower characters in "She Stoops to Conquer." The sage did not spare sarcasm. "Are you going to make a scholar of him?" asked Goldsmith, in reference to the petted boy who waited on Johnson. "Ay, Sir," was the reply, "scholar enough to write a bailiff scene in a comedy!"

Garrick now rested entirely on his old triumphs; but he acted repeatedly with Mrs. Barry. Romeo dropped from the repertory of Garrick and Barry; but Lear and Macbeth were played by each of them to the Cordelia and Lady of Barry's wife, whose versatility was remarkable; for she was the first, the best, and the richest-brogued of Widow Bradys, as she was the most touching and dignified of Lady Randolphs. As Lord and Lady Townley, the Barrys drew great houses; but Garrick was not disturbed, for his Ranger and his Hamlet drew greater still; and none of the original characters played by Barry during this, his last engagement at Drury Lane, reached a popularity which could ruffle Garrick's peace of mind. These were Rhadamistus, in "Zenobia;" Ronan, in "Fatal Discovery;" Tancred, in "Almida;" Timon, in Cumberland's version of "Timon of Athens;" Aubrey, in the "Fashionable Lover;" Evander (to his wife's Euphrasia), in the "Grecian Daughter;" Melville, in the "Duel;" and Seraphis, in "Sethona." Of these, Evander showed the actor's mastery over the feelings of his audience; Aubrey was distinguished for its grave, and Melville for its touching, dignity. With his admirers, he was still the "silver-tongued Barry," and the "silver-toned lover;" but the thick-and-thin adherents to Garrick repeated these phrases satirically, in allusion only to the silversmith, who was Spranger Barry's father.

Voltaire had written a criticism against Shakspeare's Hamlet,

which Garrick adopted; and, mangling the bard whom he professed to love, he put "Hamlet" on the stage without the Gravediggers and without Osrick! This mutilation passed for Shakspeare, until John Bannister restored the original, on playing the Dane, for his own benefit, in 1780. Yet, so irreverend to the spirit of Garrick, did this proceeding seem to old Wrighton, that when Bannister came off the stage, the elder player said to him: "Well, sir, if ever you should meet with Mr. Garrick in the next world, you will find that he will never forgive you for having restored the Grave-diggers to Hamlet!"

The most serious event, however, of this time, was the retirement of Mrs. Pritchard,—a more serious loss to the stage, perhaps, than the death of Mrs. Cibber. She had well earned repose, after five and thirty years of most arduous labor.

In 1733, Mrs. Pritchard, a young, and well-reputed married woman, was acting at our suburban fairs, but how much earlier, as Miss Vaughan, does not appear. Her slender cultivation, or rather her total want of education, is no proof that she was not of a respectable family; and the pertinacity of her brother, a clever low comedian, Henry Vaughan, in pursuing a claim to property left by a relative, Mr. Leonard, of Lyon's Im, shows that there was one quality connected with the family, which the world respects.

Mrs. Pritchard did not at once win, but long worked for, her fortune. Her husband held a subordinate post in the theatre, till her talents raised him above it. Her history, in one point, resembles Betterton's; it was a life of pure, honest, unceasing labor; she was too busy to afford much material for further record. In another point, it resembled Mrs. Betterton's, in the unobtrusive virtue of her character. While Margaret Woffington was pretending to lament over the temptations to which she yielded, and George Anne Bellamy yielded without lamenting, honest Mrs. Pritchard neither yielded nor lamented. It is true, she was not so inexpressibly beautiful as Margaret, not so saucily seductive as George Anne, but she carried with her the lustre of rectitude, and the beauty of honesty and truth; living, she was welcomed wherever virtue kept home; and dying, she left fairly-acquired wealth, a good example, and an irreproachable name to her children.

At first she fought her way very slowly, but played every thing, from Nell to Ophelia; and throughout her career she originated every variety of character, from Selima, in "Zara," to Tag, in "Miss in her Teens;" from Mrs. Beverley, in the "Gamester," to Clarinda, in the "Wedding Day;" from Hecuba to Mrs. Oakley.

We are so familiar with the prints of her as Hermione and Lady Macbeth, and to hear of her awful power in the latter, as well as of the force and dignity of her Merope, Creusa, and Zara, her almost too loud excess of grief in Volumnia, and the absolute perfection of her two queens, Katherine and Gertrude, that we are apt to remember her as a tragedian only. Her closet-scene, as the Queen in "Hamlet," was so fine and finished in every detail, that its unequalled excellence remains a tradition of the stage, like the Ophelia of Mrs. Cibber. There was a slight tendency to rant, and some lack of grace in her style, which, according to others, marred her tragedy. On the other hand, there is no dispute as to her excellence in comedy, particularly before she grew stout; and, indeed, in spite of her becoming so, as in Millamant, in which, even in her latest years, her easy manner of speaking and action, charmed her audience, though elegance of form and the beauty of youth were no longer there.

As a perfectly natural actress, she was admirable in such parts as Mrs. Oakley, Doll Common, and the Termagant, in the "Squire of Alsatia." With such characters she identified herself. I find her less commended in artificial ladies like Clarissa and Lady Dainty; and for queens of fashion, like Lady Townley and Lady Betty Modish. Yet, although she only pleased in these high-bred personages, she was "inimitably charming" in Rosalind and Beatrice, in Estifania and Clarinda, in Mrs. Sullen and Lady Brute; and in all characters of intrigue, gayety, wit, playfulness, and diversity of humor. I may sum up all by repeating that her distn.guishing qualities were natural expression, unembarrassed deportment, propriety of action, and an appropriateness of delivery which was the despair of all her contemporaries, for she took care of her consonants, and was so exact in her articulation, that, however voluble her enunciation, the audience never lost a syllable of it. Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs. Abington were selected, at various