The inheritance of Mrs. Cibber and Mrs. Pritchard was to be won by a young girl, who, about the time of Mrs. Pritchard's death, was playing Ariel and other characters in barns and hotel-rooms,--namely, Sarah Kemble,--subsequently Siddons. Miss Seward saw the three great actresses; the first two in her younger days. She never forgot the clear, distinct, and modulated voice of Mrs. Pritchard, nor the pathetic powers, the delicate, expressive features, and the silvery voice, sometimes too highly pitched, of Mrs. Cibber. Mrs. Pritchard's figure, we are told, was then "coarse and large, nor could her features, plain even to hardness, exhibit the witchery of expression. She was a just and spirited actress; a more perfectly good speaker than her more elegant, more fascinating contemporary. Mrs. Siddons has all the pathos of Mrs. Cibber, with a thousand times more variety in its exertion, and she has the justness of Mrs. Pritchard, while only Garrick's countenance could vie with her's in those endless shades of meaning which almost make her charming voice superfluous, while the fine proportion and majesty of her form, and the beauty of her face, eclipse the remembrance of all her consummate predecessors." Tate Wilkinson states, in his memoirs, that Mrs. Siddons always reminded him of Mrs. Cibber, in voice, manner, and features. But before we address ourselves to Sarah Kemble, we have to chronicle the last years of two great actors, with whose period she is connected by having played with the greater of the two,--Garrick and Barry. [Illustration: Mr. Garrick as Macbeth.] FOOTNOTES: [93] On 10th December 1763. [94] In the Memoirs of Bannister a speech to this effect is attributed to Waldron. [95] This is scarcely accurate. The fault referred to was that of "too loud and profuse expression of grief;" or, as Garrick put it, "She was apt to _blubber_ her grief." [Illustration: GARRICK'S HOUSE, HAMPTON.] CHAPTER XVIII. THE LAST YEARS OF GARRICK AND BARRY.