The opposition between Garrick and Barry was well sustained during the season of 1752-53. The former had a forcible second and substitute in Mossop, and an attractive lady to woo in comedy, or slay in tragedy, in Miss (or Mrs.) Bellamy; but a more accomplished still in Mrs. Pritchard. At the Garden, Barry was at his very best in health and acting, and Mrs. Cibber in the full bloom of her beauty and powers. It was a pity that such a pair of lovers should be separated, "for no two persons were so calculated to assist each other by voice, manner, and real feeling, as they were;" but, as Wilkinson records, "at the close of this season they separated, never to meet again on the same stage." Meanwhile, fashion patronised Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard, rather more lavishly than the rival pair. Each had their especial triumphs in new pieces. Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard, in Moore's "Gamester," first played on the 7th February 1753 (Beverley, Garrick; Lewson, Mossop; Stukely, Davies; Mrs. Beverley, Mrs. Pritchard), and Barry and Mrs. Cibber in Jones's "Earl of Essex," produced at the Garden, February 21st. Admirable as Garrick was in Beverley, Mrs. Pritchard carried off the chief honours, so natural, so terribly real, and so apparently unconscious of the audience was she in her acting. She was quite "at home" in this prose tragedy; the severe lesson in which, however, after terrifying, began to displease hearers, who did not relish the caustic laid to their darling vice. Let me also mention here Young's tragedy, the "Brothers," written thirty years before, previous to his ordination, amended by Lady Wortley Montagu, and now played in March 1753.