Your wisdom may inform you,—"
his eye had lighted up, and he answered with calm dignity—
"Please your highness,
I will from hence to-day,"
and went through the scene with more than his usual ability. But he had no sooner passed the wing than the old delusion returned; he was all Romeo, waiting for and longing to begin the garden scene with—
"Soft! what light from yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!"
And many were the fears that at his second going on, he would be disturbed. He stood dreamingly waiting at the side, but when Philotas had exclaimed, "Here comes the Briton! Let him be so entertained amongst you as suits with gentlemen of your knowing, to strangers of his quality,"—Reddish was Posthumus again, and to the remark of the Frenchman,—"Sir, we have known together in Orleans," he replied in the clear, level tone which distinguished him,—"Since when I have been debtor to you for courtesies, which I will be ever to pay and yet pay still." Thenceforward, his mind became healthy, and he played to the close with a burst of inspiration and talent, such as he had not shown, even in his best days.
His mind, however, was healthy only for the night; fitful seasons there were in which he tried to act in the country; but he soon became diseased again, and, shut up in a madhouse, poor Reddish might be seen on visitors' days at St. Luke's, a sad and humiliating spectacle, herding among the lunatics in that once popular place of cruel exhibition. Two old feelings survived the otherwise complete wreck—his love of good living, and his dislike of inferior company. He drank greedily his draught of milk, out of a wooden bowl, but the "gentleman of easy fortune" complained bitterly of his forced association with the low people who thronged the gallery. Poor Reddish! he was moved to better air, improved diet, and less plebeian society,—in the Asylum at York. The outside world had been by him long forgotten, and he forgotten by the world, when he happily died there, not one hour too soon, in the last month of the year 1785. Little more than eight years later his stepson, George Canning, made his maiden-speech in the Commons, as Tory member for Newport, and failed; but like noble actors in another house, he gained ultimate success, by turning his experience to advantage.