Among these artists, poets, statesmen, who were continually present at her representations and attended afterwards at her dressing-room door to pay their respects, in later years Byron might frequently be seen. He declared her to be the “_beau ideal_ of acting,” and said, “Miss O’Neill I would not see for fear of weakening the impression made by the queen of tragedians. When I read Lady Macbeth’s part I have Mrs. Siddons before me, and imagination even supplies her voice, whose tones were superhuman and power over the heart supernatural.” On another occasion, he is reported to have said that of actors Cook was the most natural, Kemble the most supernatural, and Kean the medium between the two, but that Mrs. Siddons was worth them all put together. The first year she acted, “the gentlemen of the bar adorned her brows with laurel,” as she says herself. The “laurel” took the substantial form of a hundred guineas and a wreath presented by two barristers. She declared it to be the most shining circumstance of her life, and alluded modestly to her “poor abilities” and insufficient claims. The gentlemen of Brookes’s Club also made up a handsome present. “Mrs. Siddons continues to be the mode,” Horace Walpole writes, “and to be modest and sensible. She declines great dinners, and says the business and cares of her family take her whole time. When Lord Carlisle carried her the tribute money from Brookes’s, he said she was not _maniérée_ enough. ‘I suppose she was grateful?’ said my niece, Lady Maria.” It is easy to imagine the difficulty she experienced in keeping her fame untarnished amidst that hotbed of vice, Covent Garden, and amidst all the adulation lavished on her. It is impossible, indeed, to say how many enemies she made by rejecting inopportune advances, and by exciting jealousies and envy; but the worst they could ever allege was that she was hard and haughty. She was continually on her guard. “One would as soon think of making love to the Archbishop of Canterbury” was said of her later; but in the early days of her first appearance at Drury Lane she was obliged often to have recourse to an outspoken rebuff to aspirants to her favour.