OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1759. close as at the opening of life, and recalled it in language which
^Tii. seeins to vouch for the truth and exactness of its record.
The scene is Covent Garden, for the time is nearly five
years advanced from the first night at Goodman's Fields;
and the play, which is Eowe's Fair Penitent, is to be
played by Quin and Eyan in Horatio and Altarnont, by
Mrs. Gibber, Mrs. Pritchard, and Garrick, in Calista,
Lavinia, and Lothario. The curtain rises, and Quin
presents himself. His dress is a green velvet coat, em-
broidered down the seams, an enormous full-bottomed
periwig, rolled stockings, and high-heeled square-toed shoes.
He goes through the scene with very little variation of
cadence. In a deep full tone, accompanied by a sawing
kind of action, which has more of the senate than the
stage in it, he rolls out his heroics with an air of dignified
indifference that seems to disdain the plaudits bestowed on
Mm. Then enters Mrs. Gibber, and in a key, high .pitched,
but sweet withal, sings, or rather recitatives, Eowe's lines :
but her voice so extremely wants contrast, that though it
does not wound the ear it wearies it; when she has once
recited two or three speeches, the manner of every succeed-
ing one is known; and the hearer listens as to a long old
legendary ballad of innumerable stanzas,, every one of
which is chanted to the same tune, eternally chiming with-
out variation or relief; Mrs. Pritchard follows, and some-
thing of the habit of nature, caught from comedy, enters the
scene with her. She has more change of tone, more variety
both of action and expression; and the comparison is
decidedly in her favour. " But when," continues Eichard
Cumberland, for it is he whom I quote, " after a long and
" eager expectation, I first beheld little Garrick, then young
" and light and alive in every muscle and in every feature,