[Footnote 186: In the broad grounds of Abington Abbey, in Northamptonshire, stands Garrick's mulberry-tree, with this inscription upon copper attached to one of the limbs: "This tree was planted by David Garrick, Esq., at the request of Ann Thursby, as a growing testimony of their friendship, 1778."] [Footnote 187: Pope was younger than Betterton, but they were very warm personal friends, and it is thought that the poet aided the actor in the adaptations which he published from Chaucer, and for which he received hearty if not merited commendation.] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 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?"] [Footnote 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._] [Footnote 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."] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 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 Jo_h_nson!"--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.]