But authors, of course, make as many mistakes as actresses. When the King, in Miss Burney's tragedy, "Edwy and Elgiva," cried, "Bring in the Bishop," the audience, thinking of the pleasant mixture so called, broke into laughter, which was only exceeded by that which broke forth when Mrs. Siddons died, under a hedge and on a superb couch! I do not believe, with Genest, that anybody ever laughed at her dying Zara; but when, in "Edward and Eleanora," the two babes were brought in, in imperial frocks and long coating, and were handed into the bed of their dying mother, the audience did break forth into loud hilarity. Indeed, babies in arms were stumbling-blocks to Mrs. Siddon's dignity. At a later period than that above-mentioned, when acting in Sotheby's "Julian and Agnes," she had to make her exit, carrying an infant. The exit was made precipitately, and in the doing of it she so violently struck the passive baby's head against a door-post as to discover that the said head was made of wood. The audience laughed again, and Agnes, Countess of Tortona, all taken aback as she was, laughed heartily too. Once also, when Mrs. Siddons was playing Agnes in Lillo's "Fatal Curiosity," and the flesh of the audience crept at her suggestion of murdering the stranger, who is her son,--as the scene proceeded towards the murder, one gentleman in the pit laughed aloud; he would have been roughly treated by the audience, but for the discovery that he was in hysterics at her acting. At other times, the actress was overcome by herself. In the pretended fainting scene of Arpasia, in "Tamerlane," after the wild cry, "Love! Death! Moneses!" Mrs. Siddons fell back violently, clutching her drapery, and her dress all disordered,--a swoon in earnest, which caused a rush, from the pit and boxes, of part of the excited and sympathising audience. The agitation of the actress was almost perilous to her life! There were occasions, however, on which that audience refused to be sympathetic. When she and her brother acted in Jephson's dull "Conspiracy," we are told that they "acted to vacancy: the hollow sound of their voices was the most dreary thing in the world." This was among the least of her troubles; at the moment of her greatest exertions, family cares and sorrows pressed on her. Mr. Siddons's speculations alarmed her prudent mind. Mr. Sheridan's money, when he held the purse at Drury Lane, flowed but slowly and intermittently into her banker's coffers; and if this, or even illness, drove her into temporary retirement, she had enemies who reported that her brain was not as well as it might be.