“In all the crowded theater, care and pain and poverty were banished from the memory, while Oldfield's face spoke, and her tongue flashed melodies; the lawyer forgot his quillets; the polemic, the mote in his brother's eye; the old maid, her grudge against the two sexes; the old man, his gray hairs and his lost hours. And can it be, that all this which should have been immortal, is quite—quite lost, is as though it had never been?” he sighed. “Can it be that its fame is now sustained by me; who twang with my poor lute, cracked and old, these feeble praises of a broken lyre:
'Whose wires were golden and its heavenly air
More tunable than lark to shepherd's ear,
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.'”
He paused, and his eye looked back over many years. Then, with a very different tone, he added:
“And that Jack Falstaff there must have seen her, now I think on't.”
“Only once, sir,” said Quin, “and I was but ten years old.”
“He saw her once, and he was ten years old; yet he calls Woffington a great comedian, and my son The's wife, with her hatchet face, the greatest tragedian he ever saw! Jemmy, what an ass you must be!”
“Mrs. Cibber always makes me cry, and t'other always makes me laugh,” said Quin, stoutly, “that's why.”
Ce beau raisonnement met no answer, but a look of sovereign contempt.
A very trifling incident saved the ladies of the British stage from further criticism. There were two candles in this room, one on each side; the call-boy had entered, and, poking about for something, knocked down and broke one of these.
“Awkward imp!” cried a velvet page.