[188] Garrick was for a long time at her feet, and indeed was at one time engaged to be married to her, but the nuptials were not consummated. It was generally believed that the engagement was broken from disinclination on her part.
[189] During the vacation season Miss Woffington went to Bath, and on her return was telling Quin how much she had been pleased by the excursion. "And pray, madam," he inquired, "what made you go to Bath?" "Mere wantonness," she replied. "And pray, madam, did it cure you?"
[190] From the volatility of his mind and conduct, it would be a misuse of language to say that he had good principles or bad principles. He had no principles at all. His life was a life of expedients and appearances, in which he developed a shrewdness and capacity made up of talent and mystification, of ability and trickery, which were found equal to almost all emergencies.—Whipple.
[191] Sheridan probably had not a penny in his pocket. He never did have for more than a few minutes at a time; yet this was the man of whose famous speech in the House of Commons Burke said: "It was the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or tradition." And of which Fox said, "All that he had ever heard, all that he had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapor before the sun."
[192] "A perpetual fountain of good sense," Dryden calls him; "and of good humor, too, and wholesome thought," adds Lowell. He was scholar, courtier, soldier, ambassador, one who had known poverty as a housemate, and who had been the companion of princes.
[193] Jonson died on the 6th of August, 1637, at the age of sixty-three. He survived both wife and children. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. A common slab laid over his grave bears the inscription, "O Rare Ben Johnson!"—not Jonson, as it is always printed. Jonson was a heavy drinker, and it has been said that every line of his poetry cost him a cup of sack. Canary was his favorite drink; of which he partook so immoderately that his friends called him familiarly the Canary Bird.
[194] Coleridge says sadly in his "Literary Life," "I have laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this wilderness the world, with ostrich carelessness and ostrich oblivion. The greater part, indeed, have been trodden under foot and are forgotten. But yet no small number have crept forth into life, some to furnish feathers for the caps of others, and still more to plume the shafts in the quiver of my enemies,—of them that, unprovoked, have lain in wait against my soul."
[195] So disgusted was the paternal upholsterer, Pocquelin, at his son's choice of the stage for a profession, that he virtually disowned him. Molière was an assumed name, to save the family honor; but how rapidly that name became famous.
[196] Molière was fascinated by his young wife; her lighter follies charmed him. He was a husband who was always a lover. The actor on the stage was the very man he personated. Mademoiselle Molière, as she was called by the public, was the Lucile in "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme." With what a fervor the poet feels her neglect! with what eagerness he defends her from the animadversions of the friend who would have dissolved the spell!—Disraeli.
[197] Campbell the poet and Turner the artist were dining together on a certain occasion with a large party. The poet was called upon for a toast, and by way of a joke on the great professor of the "sister art" gave, "The Painters and Glaziers." After the laughter had subsided, the artist was of course summoned to propose a toast also. He rose, and with admirable tact and ready wit responded to the author of "Pleasures of Memory" by giving "The Paper-stainers."