Between this period and the time when she lay stricken by paralysis, the interval was not long; and then the forsaken creature, if vanity abided with her, was obliged to content herself with reminiscences of the past--when she was the Laura Maria of Della Crusca, and when Merry declared that future poets and ages would join "to pour in Laura's praise their melodies divine." During that same time Peter Pindar called her, "_The_ nymph of my heart;" Burgoyne pronounced her "perfect as woman and artist;" Tickle proclaimed her "the British Sappho;" John Taylor hailed her, "Pensive Songstress;" Boaden recorded her, "mentally perfect;" the Hon. John St. John asserted that "Nature had formed her queen of song;" Kerr Porter saluted her in thundering heroics; and two theatrical parsons, Will Tasker and Paul Columbine, flung heaps of flowers at her feet, with the zeal of heathen priests before an incarnation of Flora. And so passes by this vision of fair last-century women to make way for a group of actors of the Garrick school--standing a little apart from whom is John Henderson, whom the town was willing to take for David's successor. [Illustration: Mr. Beard as Hawthorn.] FOOTNOTES: [19] Her last appearance was 26th May 1780. [20] I cannot find any mention of her earlier than 1735. [21] 1780. [22] Mrs. Cibber died on 30th January 1766. [23] Mrs. Bellamy calls this lady Godfrey. [24] The benefit took place on 24th May 1785. [25] Mrs. Pope's name is in the bills for the last time on 26th January 1797. [26] Mrs. Abington played the Widow Belmour, in "The Way to Keep Him," at Drury Lane, on 27th November 1765, being "her first appearance there for five years." [27] "The Miniature Picture" is not by Mrs. Robinson, but by the Margravine of Anspach. [28] Her last appearance was no doubt on 31st May 1780, when "Rule a Wife," and the "Miniature Picture" were played. [29] Miss Stephens died February 22, 1882. [Illustration: MR. PALMER AS TAG.] CHAPTER V. A GROUP OF GENTLEMEN. The players of the Garrick period and the years immediately succeeding it, followed in due time their great master. Of these, Samuel Reddish was a player of that great epoch, who, for some especial parts, stood in the foremost rank. We first hear of him in the season of 1761-62, strengthening Mossop's company in Smock Alley, Dublin, by his performance of Etan, in the "Orphan of China." Of his origin, no one knows more than what he published of himself in the Irish papers,--that he was "a gentleman of easy fortune." This description was turned against him by his old enemy, Macklin, on one occasion, when Reddish in a part he was acting, threw away an elegantly-bound book, which he was supposed to have been reading. Macklin's comment was that, however unnatural in the character he was representing, it was quite consistent in Mr. Reddish himself, who, "you know, has advertised himself as a gentleman of easy fortune."