Garrick, who would have nothing to do with Goldsmith’s comedy except giving it a prologue, was ‘in shadow’ this year. He improved ‘Hamlet,’ by leaving out the gravediggers; and he swamped the theatre with the ‘Portsmouth Review.’ He went so far as to rewrite ‘The Fair Quaker of Deal,’ to the tune of ‘Portsmouth and King George for ever!’ not to mention a preface, in which the Earl of Sandwich, by name, is preferred to Drake, Blake, and all the admirals that ever existed! If Walpole’s criticisms are not always just, they are occasionally admirable for terseness and correctness alike. London, in 1773, was in raptures with the singing of Cecilia Davies. Walpole quaintly said that he did not love the perfection of what anybody can do, and he wished ‘she had less top to her voice and more bottom.’ How good too is his sketch of a male singer, who ‘sprains his mouth with smiling on himself!’ But to return to Garrick, and an illustration of social manners a century ago, we must not omit to mention that, at a private party--at Beauclerk’s, Garrick played the ‘short-armed orator’ with Goldsmith! The latter sat in Garrick’s lap, concealing him, but with Garrick’s arms advanced under Goldsmith’s shoulders; the arms of the latter being held behind his back. Goldsmith then spoke a speech from ‘Cato,’ while Garrick’s shortened arms supplied the action. The effect, of course, was ridiculous enough to excite laughter, as the action was often in absurd diversity from the utterance. In the present newspaper record of births a man’s wife is no longer called his ‘lady;’ a hundred years ago there was plentiful variety of epithet. ‘The Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, spouse to the Prince of that name, of a Princess,’ is one form. ‘Earl Tyrconnel’s lady of a child,’ is another. ‘Wife’ was seldom used. One birth is announced in the following words: ‘The Duchess of Chartres, at Paris, of a Prince who has the title of Duke of Valois.’ Duke of Valois? ay, and subsequently Duke of Chartres, Duke of Orléans, finally, Louis Philippe, King of the French!