[56] Should be the 13th. [57] This incident is said to have occurred at a rehearsal. [58] I do not know why Dr. Doran says "alleged" sister. [59] Campbell's account of this incident makes its meaning quite clear. He says that when, after a supreme effort, the silence was broken by the solitary "that's no' bad!" the audience was convulsed at the "ludicrous parsimony of praise." But the laughter was followed by such thunders of applause that it seemed as if the galleries would come down. [60] This is inaccurate. The play was a success, and Mrs. Siddons was said to have been seldom more admired than in it. [61] Walpole's letter is dated Christmas 1782. [62] This was the notorious Mrs. Curtis, previously mentioned. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald (_Kembles_, ii. 98) gives an admirable account of her life. [Illustration: JOHN P. KEMBLE.] CHAPTER VIII. JOHN KEMBLE. On the 1st of February 1757, John Philip Kemble was born at Prescot, in Lancashire. His father's itinerant life not only led to his appearance on the stage when a child, but to his being placed at school at Worcester, whence he passed through Sedgley to Douay, where he was remarkable for his elocution. He had for college fellow Miller, or Milner, as he chose to call himself--and who, when a Roman Catholic prelate, used to affirm that, in point of elocution, he was considered equal to Kemble! In 1776, the year in which Garrick retired, Kemble may be said to have made his first public appearance as an actor at Wolverhampton, and Boaden thinks he was too good for his audience. In various northern towns he endured a stern probation, and made sundry mistakes. He played Plume, Ranger, and Archer, which were totally unsuited to him; and he was actually laughed at in tragedy--by some persons of distinction in the boxes at York. He resented this with such dignity, that the York fine people, who could not understand the latter feeling, insisted on an apology; and when the rest of the house declared he should make none, he thanked them with such a weight of heavy argument to show they and he were right, that those bewildered Yorkists demanded of him to beg pardon immediately.[63] Subsequently, John Kemble published fugitive poems, which he was afterwards glad to burn; wrote a tragedy, "Belisarius," and a comedy, the "Female Officer;" composed a Latin ode, _Ad Somnium_, and a Latin epitaph for his dead comrade, Inchbald; laid the foundations of friendship with the Percys; gave lectures on oratory; and, at twenty-three, made an attempt to improve Shakspeare's "Comedy of Errors," by turning it into a farce, called "Oh, it's impossible!" the chief point in which was that the audience should be as puzzled about the two Dromios, of whom he made a couple of niggers, as their masters themselves.