No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face:
One would not sure be frightful when one's dead—
And, Betty, give this cheek a little red."
But it does not appear that there is any authority for this speech, except the poet's. A letter written to her first biographer by an attendant during her last illness says, that "although she had no priest," she "prayed without ceasing," which does not look like an attention to dress; but the biographer adds, that "as the nicety of dress was her delight when living, she was as nicely dressed after her decease; being, by Mrs. Saunders' direction, thus laid in her coffin." The nicety here mentioned was, to be sure, "mortal fine."—"She had on," says the writer, "a very fine Brussels lace-head, a Holland shift with tucker, and double ruffles of the same lace; a pair of new kid gloves, and her body wrapt up in a winding sheet."[266] Yet we are of Montaigne's opinion, and know not why death should be rendered more melancholy than it is. When a tomb was opened in Greece, supposed to be that of Aspasia, there was found in it a sprig of myrtle in gold.
The next batch of players, with Garrick at their head, are Quin, Macklin, Barry, King, Woodward, Gentleman Smith, and others; with Mrs. Clive, Pritchard, Cibber, and Woffington. Garrick's later contemporaries are Parsons, Dodd, Quick, the Palmers, Miss Pope, Mrs. Abingdon, and others, who bring us down to Mrs. Siddons, Miss Farren, &c., the commencers of our own time. Of Steele and the sentimental comedy we need say no more. Goldsmith belongs to Covent Garden; Foote to the Haymarket; and Cumberland, though an elegant writer, does not call for any particular mention in an abstract like this.
When Garrick first appeared, a declamatory grandeur prevailed in tragedy, which we conceive to have arisen in the time of Charles II. It was probably handed down by Booth; and imitated, with the usual deterioration, from Betterton, who, though a true genius and a universal one, may not have been uncorrupted by the taste of the times; not to mention that it is doubtful, till Garrick appeared, whether the art of acting was not identified with something too much of an art, and the delicacy of verses expected to partake more of recitation and musical accompaniment than we now look for. Our suspicion to this effect arises from the traditional habits of the stage, one generation handing down the manner of another, and Betterton himself having been educated in the school of those who were bred up in the recollection of Burbage and Condell. Shakspeare himself, from custom, or even from some subtlety of reason, might have approved of something of this kind; though, on the other hand, in the celebrated directions of Hamlet to the players, there appears to be a secret dissatisfaction with the most applauded actors of that time, as not being exactly what was desirable. If this notion is just, and the great poet of nature was as much advanced beyond his time in this as in other respects, he might indeed have hailed such an actor as Garrick, however hyperbolically they have been sometimes put together. The best performers whom Garrick found in possession of public applause, though some of them are described as excelling in all the varieties of passion (as Mrs. Cibber, for instance, notwithstanding the different impression given of her in the following quotation), appear to have been more or less of the old declamatory school. Quin in particular, then at the head of the profession, was an avowed declaimer, having the same notions of tragedy in the delivery which his friend Thomson had in the composition. Posterity respects Quin as the friend of Thomson, and laughs with him as an epicure and a wit. Garrick and he ultimately became friends. Of the first reception of the new style introduced by Garrick, its electrical effects upon some, and the natural hesitation of others to give up their old favourites, a lively picture has been left us by Cumberland.
Speaking of himself, who was then at Westminster school, he says,—
"I was once or twice allowed to go, under proper convoy, to the play, where, for the first time in my life, I was treated by the sight of Garrick in the character of Lothario. Quin played Horatio; Ryan, Altamont; Mrs. Cibber, Calista; and Mrs. Pritchard condescended to the humble part of Lavinia. I enjoyed a good view of the stage from the front row of the gallery, and my attention was rivetted to the scene. I have the spectacle even now, as it were, before my eyes. Quin presented himself, upon the rising of the curtain, in a green velvet coat, embroidered down the seams, an enormous full-bottomed periwig, rolled stockings, and high-heeled, square-toed shoes. With very little variation of cadence, and in a deep, full tone, accompanied by a sawing kind of action, which had more of the senate than of the stage in it, he rolled out his heroics with an air of dignified indifference, that seemed to disdain the plaudits that were bestowed upon him. Mrs. Cibber, in a key high pitched, but sweet withal, sung, or rather recitatived, Rowe's harmonious strain, something in the manner of the improvisatore's; it was so extremely wanting in contrast, that, though it did not wound the ear, it wearied it; when she had once recited two or three speeches, I could anticipate the manner of every succeeding one; it was like a long, old, legendary ballad of innumerable stanzas, every one of which is sung to the same tune, eternally chiming in the ear without variation or relief. Mrs. Pritchard was an actress of a different cast, had more nature, and, of course, more change of tone, and variety both of action and expression: in my opinion the comparison was decidedly in her favour; but when, after long and eager expectation, I first beheld little Garrick, then young and light and alive in every muscle and in every feature, come bounding on the stage, and pointing at the wittol Altamont and heavy-paced Horatio—heavens, what a transition!—it seemed as if a whole century had been swept over in the transition of a single scene; old things were done away and a new order at once brought forward, bright and luminous, and clearly destined to dispel the barbarisms and bigotry of a tasteless age, too long attached to the prejudices of custom, and superstitiously devoted to the illusions of imposing declamation. This heaven-born actor was then struggling to emancipate his audience from the slavery they were resigned to; and though, at times, he succeeded in throwing in some gleams of newborn light upon them, yet, in general they seemed to love darkness better than light, and, in the dialogue of altercation between Horatio and Lothario, bestowed far the greater show of hands upon the master of the old school than upon the founder of the new. I thank my stars, my feelings in those moments led me right; they were those of nature, and therefore could not err."[267]