This caused a sensation.
Colley's reminiscences were interrupted by loud applause from the theater; the present seldom gives the past a long hearing.
The old war-horse cocked his ears.
“It is Woffington speaking the epilogue,” said Quin.
“Oh, she has got the length of their foot, somehow,” said a small actress.
“And the breadth of their hands, too,” said Pomander, waking from a nap.
“It is the depth of their hearts she has sounded,” said Vane.
In those days, if a metaphor started up, the poor thing was coursed up hill and down dale, and torn limb from jacket; even in Parliament, a trope was sometimes hunted from one session into another.
“You were asking me about Mrs. Oldfield, sir,” resumed Cibber, rather peevishly. “I will own to you, I lack words to convey a just idea of her double and complete supremacy. But the comedians of this day are weak-strained farceurs compared with her, and her tragic tone was thunder set to music.
“I saw a brigadier-general cry like a child at her Indiana; I have seen her crying with pain herself at the wing (for she was always a great sufferer), I have seen her then spring upon the stage as Lady Townley, and in a moment sorrow brightened into joy: the air seemed to fill with singing-birds, that chirped the pleasures of fashion, love and youth in notes sparkling like diamonds and stars and prisms. She was above criticism, out of its scope, as is the blue sky; men went not to judge her, they drank her, and gazed at her, and were warmed at her, and refreshed by her. The fops were awed into silence, and with their humbler betters thanked Heaven for her, if they thanked it for anything.