The father of James Quin was a barrister of a good Irish family, and at one time resided in King Street, Covent Garden, where James was born in 1693. Mrs. Quin happened to be the wife of two husbands. The first, who had abandoned her, and who, after years of absence, was supposed to be dead, re-appeared after Quin's birth, and carried off the boy's mother as his own lawful wife.[21] Thereby, the boy himself was deprived of his inheritance; the Quin property, which was considerable, passed to the heir at law, and at the age of twenty-one, the young man, intelligent but uneducated, his illusions of being a _squireen_ in Ireland being all dissipated, and being specially fitted for no vocation, went at once upon the stage. His time of probation was first spent on the Dublin boards, in 1714, where he played very small parts with such great propriety, that in the following year, on the recommendation of Chetwood, the prompter, he was received, still as a probationer, into the company then acting at Drury Lane. Booth, Cibber, Mills, and Wilks were the chief players at that theatre, and the young actor was at least among noble professors. Among, but not of them, he remained for at least two seasons, acting the walking gentlemen, and fulfilling "general utility," without a chance of reaching a higher rank. One night, however, in 1716, when the run of the revived "Tamerlane" was threatened with interruption by the sudden illness of the most ferocious of Bajazets, Quin was induced, most reluctantly on the foolish fellow's side, to read the part. In doing this with conscientiousness and judgment, he received such testimonies of approval, that he made himself master of the words by the following night, and when the curtain fell, found himself famous. The critics in the pit, and the fine gentlemen who hung about the stage, united in acknowledging his merits; the coffee-houses tossed his name about pleasantly as a novelty, and Mr. Mills paid him the compliment of speedily getting well. When Mr. Mills resumed Bajazet, young Quin sank down to the Dervise; and though, subsequently, his cast of characters was improved, his patience was so severely tried, that in the succeeding season he passed over to the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Modestly entering there in the part of Benducar, in "Don Sebastian,"[22] he at once established himself in the public favour, and before the close of the season 1718-19, the chivalry of his Hotspur, the bluntness of his Clytus, the fire of his Bajazet, the grandeur of his Macbeth, the calm dignity of his Brutus, the unctuousness of his Falstaff,[23] the duplicity of his Maskwell, and the coarse comedy of his Sir John Brute, were circumstances of which the town talked quite as eagerly as they did of the Quadruple Alliance, and the musket shot which had slain the royal Swede in the trenches before Frederickshall.