"Muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyre,
None but the noblest passions to inspire;
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line, which, dying, he could wish to blot."
The last night Quin played as an engaged actor, was at Covent Garden, on the 15th of May 1751; the play was the "Fair Penitent," in which he acted Horatio to the Lothario of Barry, and the Calista of Mrs. Cibber. After this he quietly withdrew, without leave-taking, returning only once or twice to play for the benefit of a friend. In his later years, his professional income is said to have reached £1000 a year. He was the first English actor who received £50 a night, during a part of his career. The characters he created were in pieces which have died off the stage, save Comus, which he acted with effective dignity in the season of 1737-8;—a part in which Mr. Macready distinguished himself, during his memorable management of Drury Lane.
Quin's social position, after leaving the stage, was one congenial to a man of his merits, taste, and acquirements. He was a welcome guest at many noble hearths—from that of ducal Chatsworth to that of modest Allen's at Prior Park. At the former he and Garrick met. There had not been a cordial intimacy between the two as actors; but as private gentlemen they became friends. This better state of things was owing to the kindly feeling of Quin. The two men were left alone in a room at Chatsworth, and Quin made the first step towards a reconciliation by asking a question the most agreeable he could put—inquiring after Mrs. Garrick's health. In this scene the two men come before me as distinct as a couple of figures drawn by Meissonier—quaint in costume, full of character and life, pleasant to look at and to remember.
Quin was Garrick's guest at Hampton, when he was stricken in 1765 with the illness which ultimately proved fatal. He died, however, in his own house in Bath. "I could wish," he said the day before, "that the last tragic scene were over; and I hope I may be enabled to meet and pass through it with dignity." He passed through it becomingly on the 21st of January 1766; and Garrick placed the following lines on the old actor's tomb in the Abbey—a pyramid of Sienna marble, bearing a medallion portrait of Quin, resting on a sarcophagus, on which the inscription is engraved, supported by the mask of Thalia and the dagger of Melpomene.
"That tongue which set the table in a roar,
And charmed the public ear, is heard no more;
Clos'd are those eyes, the harbingers of wit,