When the rich rouge pot pours its blaze
Full o’er thy face, and amply spread,
Tips even thy whisker-tops with red—
Like the last tints of dying day
That o’er some darkling grove delay.
Put all thy wardrobe’s glories on,
And yield in frogs and fringe to none
But the great Regent’s self alone.”
Skeffington’s success with The Sleeping Beauty occurred at the time when he was most prominent in society. “I have had a long and very pleasant walk to-day with Mr Ilingworth in Kensington Gardens, and saw all the extreme crowd there about three o’clock, and between that and four,” Lord Kenyon wrote to his wife on 1st June 1806. “The most conspicuous figure was Mr Skeffington, with Miss Duncan leaning on his arm. He is so great an author that all which is done is thought correct, and not open to scandal. To be sure, they looked rather a comical pair, she with only a cap on, and he with his curious whiskers and sharp, sallow face.”
Gradually, however, as time changed, Skeffington was left behind in the race, and was no longer regarded as a leader of fashion, and at the same time he was not fortunate enough to win further success as a dramatist, for his Mysterious Bride in 1808, his Bombastes Furioso played at the Haymarket in 1810, and his Lose no Time, performed three years later at Drury Lane, were each and all dire failures.