Mrs. Pritchard did not at once win, but long worked for her fortune. Her husband held a subordinate post in the theatre, till her talents raised him above it. Her history, in one point, resembles Betterton's; it was a life of pure, honest, unceasing labour; she was too busy to afford much material for further record. In another point, it resembled Mrs. Betterton's, in the unobtrusive virtue of her character. While Margaret Woffington was pretending to lament over the temptations to which she yielded, and George Anne Bellamy yielded without lamenting, honest Mrs. Pritchard neither yielded nor lamented. It is true, she was not so inexpressibly beautiful as Margaret, not so saucily seductive as George Anne, but she carried with her the lustre of rectitude, and the beauty of honesty and truth; living, she was welcomed wherever virtue kept home; and dying, she left fairly-acquired wealth, a good example, and an irreproachable name to her children. At first she fought her way very slowly, but played everything, from Nell to Ophelia; and throughout her career she originated every variety of character, from Selima, in "Zara," to Tag, in "Miss in her Teens;" from Mrs. Beverley, in the "Gamester," to Clarinda, in the "Wedding Day;" from Hecuba to Mrs. Oakley. We are so familiar with the prints of her as Hermione and Lady Macbeth, and to hear of her awful power in the latter, as well as of the force and dignity of her Merope, Creusa, and Zara, her almost too loud excess of grief in Volumnia, and the absolute perfection of her two queens, Katherine and Gertrude, that we are apt to remember her as a tragedian only. Her closet-scene, as the queen in "Hamlet," was so fine and finished in every detail that its unequalled excellence remains a tradition of the stage, like the Ophelia of Mrs. Cibber. There was a slight tendency to rant,[95] and some lack of grace in her style, which, according to others, marred her tragedy. On the other hand, there is no dispute as to her excellence in comedy, particularly before she grew stout; and, indeed, in spite of her becoming so, as in Millamant, in which, even in her latest years, her easy manner of speaking and action charmed her audience, though elegance of form and the beauty of youth were no longer there. [Illustration: (Mrs Pritchard)]