A better gentleman than either, Philip Frowde--scholar, wit, poet, true man, friend of Addison, and a friend to all,--was praised by the critics for his "Fall of Saguntum;" but the public voice did not ratify the judgment, though Ryan, as Fabius, and Quin, as Eurydamas, with Mrs. Berriman, as Candace,--an Amazonian queen, with nothing very womanly about her,--exerted themselves to the utmost. One other failure has to be recorded--"Philip of Macedon," by David Lewis, the friend of Pope. With a dull tragedy, Pope's friend had no more chance of misleading the public, than his foes, with weak comedies. The greater poet's commendation so little influenced that public, that on the first night, with Pope himself in the house, the audience was so numerically small,--though Walker, Ryan, Quin, Mrs. Berriman, Mrs. Younger, and others, were, in their "habits" as unlike Macedonians as they could well be,--the managers deemed acting to such a house not profitable, and dismissed it accordingly. The author's final condemnation was only postponed for a night or two, when he sank, never to rise again.[122] [Illustration: (Lavinia Fenton.)] With Booth's failing health, and the ill-success of novelties produced at either house, there was a gloom over theatrical matters. But at this very time a sun was rising from behind the cloud. In one of the irregular series of performances, held at the little theatre in the Haymarket, in 1726, there appeared a young lady, in the part of Monimia, in the "Orphan," and subsequently as Cherry, in the "Beaux' Stratagem." She was pretty, clever, and eighteen; but she was not destined to become either the tragic or the comic queen. Soon after, however, thanks to the judgment of Rich, who gave her the opportunity, she was hailed as the queen of English song. She was known as Lavinia Fenton, but she was the daughter of a naval lieutenant, named Beswick. Her widowed mother had married a coffee-house keeper in Charing Cross, whose name of Fenton was assumed by his step-daughter. Before we shall hear of her at Lincoln's Inn Fields, a lieutenant[123] will be offering her everything he possessed except his name; but Lavinia, without being as discreet, was even more successful than Pamela, and died a duchess.