Quin's social position, after leaving the stage, was one congenial to a man of his merits, taste, and acquirements. He was a welcome guest at many noble hearths--from that of ducal Chatsworth to that of modest Allen's at Prior Park. At the former he and Garrick met. There had not been a cordial intimacy between the two as actors; but as private gentlemen they became friends. This better state of things was owing to the kindly feeling of Quin. The two men were left alone in a room at Chatsworth, and Quin made the first step towards a reconciliation by asking a question the most agreeable he could put--inquiring after Mrs. Garrick's health. In this scene the two men come before me as distinct as a couple of figures drawn by Meissonier--quaint in costume, full of character and life, pleasant to look at and to remember. Quin was Garrick's guest at Hampton, when he was stricken in 1765 with the illness which ultimately proved fatal. He died, however, in his own house in Bath. "I could wish," he said the day before, "that the last tragic scene were over; and I hope I may be enabled to meet and pass through it with dignity." He passed through it becomingly on the 21st of January 1766; and Garrick placed the following lines on the old actor's tomb in the Abbey--a pyramid of Sienna marble, bearing a medallion portrait of Quin, resting on a sarcophagus, on which the inscription is engraved, supported by the mask of Thalia and the dagger of Melpomene. "That tongue which set the table in a roar, And charmed the public ear, is heard no more; Clos'd are those eyes, the harbingers of wit, Which spake, before the tongue, what Shakspere writ. Cold is that hand which, living, was stretch'd forth At friendship's call, to succour modest worth. Here lies JAMES QUIN. Deign, reader, to be taught, Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought, In nature's happiest mould however cast, To this complexion thou must come at last." Kind-hearted people have remarked that Garrick never said so much to, or of, Quin when he was alive. Perhaps not. He struggled with Quin for mastery--vanquished him; became his friend, and hung up over his grave a glowing testimony to his talent and his virtues. This was in the spirit of old chivalry. What would kind-hearted people have? Was it not well in Garrick to speak truthfully of one dead whom, when living, he thus with pleasant satire described as soliloquising at the tomb of Duke Humphrey at St. Albans-- "A plague on Egypt's art, I say! Embalm the dead! On senseless clay Rich wines and spices waste! Like sturgeon, or like brawn, shall I Bound in a precious pickle lie, Which I can never taste? Let me embalm this flesh of mine With turtle fat, and Bordeaux wine, And spoil th' Egyptian trade! Than Humphry's Duke more happy I, Embalm'd alive, old Quin shall die A mummy ready made."