Mrs. Haywood followed Savage's example, in acting in her own comedy, "A Wife to be Let;"[115] but as this and other original pieces or adaptations passed away unheeded or disgraced, I may here conclude my notice of this season, by recording the death of Mrs. Bicknell, a woman, or rather an actress of merit, and the original representative of Cherry in the "Beaux' Stratagem." Against Drury, the house in the Fields long struggled in vain. Audiences, of five or six pounds in value, discouraged the actors. Egleton was not equal to Cibber; yet the "Baron," as he was called, from having assumed the title, when squandering his little patrimony in France, was next to Colley in fops. Quin, Ryan, and Boheme could not attract like Booth, Wilks, and Cibber; and Hippisley and others, acting "Julius Cæsar," as a comic piece, was not a happy idea.[116] Not more so, was that of turning the story of "Cartouche," who had recently been broken on the wheel, into a farce. The company lost their best actress, too, in Mrs. Seymour, whom Boheme married and took off the stage, to Ryan's great regret, as she acted admirably up to him. A promising actor, too, was lost to the troop, in young Reakstraw. In the summer vacation he was playing Darius, in a booth in Moorfields,--no derogation in those days. In the scene in which he is attacked by Bessus and Nabarzanes, one of the latter two thrust his foil at the King so awkwardly, that it entered the eye, pierced his brain, and laid the actor, after a scream, dead upon the boards! With this season, it is to be noted that the fortune of Lincoln's Inn mended--thanks to the impertinence of Colley Cibber. To the latter, a tragedy had been presented by a modest gentleman, of a good old Staffordshire family, named Fenton. He was forty years of age at this time. Cibber knew his antecedents, that his Jacobite principles had been an obstacle to his ordination, for which he was well qualified, and that although he had been secretary and tutor in the family of Lord Orrery, Fenton had also earned his bread in the humble, but honourable, capacity of usher in a boarding-school. Colley read the tragedy, "Mariamne," and after keeping it unnecessarily long, he returned it, with the advice that Fenton should stick to some honest calling, and cease to woo the Muses. Elijah Fenton, however, had friends who enabled him now to live independently of labour, and by their counsel he took "Mariamne" to Rich, who immediately brought it out, with Quin as Sohemus, Boheme as Herod, and Mrs. Seymour as Mariamne--her one great creation.