Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, March 1885Various
History
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, March 1885
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
As for Della Crusca, he married, in 1791, Miss Brunton, an actress,
whose sister became Countess of Craven, and who had played the heroine
in his tragedy of _Lorenzo_. His reply to the remonstrances of his
aunt on the _mésalliance_ shall be quoted, to show that he had his
lucid intervals. “She ought,” he said, “to be proud that he had brought
a woman of such virtue and talents into the family. Her virtue his
marrying her proved; and her talents would all be thrown away by taking
her off the stage.” Nevertheless, he afterwards weakly yielded to his
relations, and withdrew her from the stage against her own inclination,
thereby depriving himself of a source of income with which, as
a gambler and _bon vivant_, he could ill afford to dispense. He
accordingly quitted England, and must have betaken himself to France,
an adventure which befell him in Paris, in September, 1792, being thus
amusingly given by Horace Walpole:—
In the midst of the massacre of Monday last, Mr. Merry, immortalized,
not by his verses, but by those of the _Baviad_, was mistaken for the
Abbé Maury, and was going to be hoisted to the _lanterne_. He cried
out that he was Merry, the poet: the ruffians, who probably had never
read the scene in Shakespeare, yet replied, “Then we will hang you for
your bad verses”; but he escaped better than Cinna, I don't know how,
and his fright cost him but a few “gossamery tears,” and I suppose
he will be happy to re-cross the “silky ocean,” and shed dolorous
nonsense in rhyme over the woes of _this_ happy country.
But England was not to see much more of Merry. English society was
probably not so kind to the Radical husband of an actress as it had
been to the bachelor of fashion. He withdrew, with his wife, to
America, in 1796, and died, three years afterwards, of apoplexy, in his
garden at Baltimore.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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