Constance.

'He talks to me that never had a son.'

King Philip.

'You are as fond of grief as of your child.'

Constance.

'Grief fills the room up of my absent child;
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuff's out his vacant garments with his form ;
Then have I reason to be fond of grief.—
Fare you well !—had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do.

dress.

I will not keep this form upon my head [tears off her headWhen there is such disorder in my wit.

Oh Lord! my boy! my Arthur! my

fair son,

my fair My life, my joy, my food, my all the world! My widow's comfort, and my sorrow's care!'

"Her gorgeous affliction, if such an expression is allowable, is of so sublime and so intense a character, that the personation of its grandeur, with the utterance of its rapid and astonishing eloquence, almost overwhelms the mind that meditates its realization, and utterly exhausts

Q

the frame which endeavours to express its

agitations."

In spite of all these difficulties in the part of Constance, Mrs. Siddons must have been conscious that she had strengthened her reputation by performing it, and it is difficult henceforward to imagine her fearful of attempting any other great character in the drama. I therefore very much doubt the justice of Mr. Boaden's remark, when, after noticing that she selected the part of Lady Randolph for her first benefit this season, December 22, 1783,* he adds, that " perhaps the most serious moment of her professional life was that in which she resolved to contest even that character with her rival, Mrs. Crawford." I cannot conceive what there was to render the trial so terrific. The passion of one of Constance's speeches would leaven the whole

*Cast of parts: Douglas, Brereton; Norval, Bensley ; Glenalvon, Palmer; Lord Randolph, Farren.

part of Lady Randolph. Mrs. Crawford's Lady Randolph had undoubtedly been once a great performance; but I have already noticed, that from the first night of her reappearance at Covent Garden, after an absence of five years, the general opinion regarded her as a brokendown actress. The tragedy of "Douglas" was got up for Mrs. Crawford's reappearance, on the 13th November, 1783, and Mrs. Siddons did not perform Lady Randolph at Drury Lane till more than a month afterwards, so that she had plenty of time to rally her courage. Indeed, when we contemplate Mrs. Siddons in the blaze of her beauty, competing with this toil and age worn rival, it is almost cruel to exult in her victory. Mrs. Siddons omitted Mrs. Crawford's scream in the far-famed question, "Was he alive?" but she gave the character its appropriate beauty, and made the tragedy itself more permanently popular.

The only other new characters which she

acted during her second season, were the Countess of Salisbury, in a tragedy of that name, and Sigismunda, in Thomson's "Tancred and Sigismunda." In neither of those pieces could she be said to be worthily employed. The "Countess of Salisbury" had first appeared some thirty years before, on the Dublin stage, where the popularity of Barry and of Mrs. Dancer, afterwards Mrs. Barry, supported it. Small as its merit was, its real author, Hall Hartson, was accused of having had it from his college tutor, Dr. Leland, the translator of Demosthenes : the charge against Hartson, of purloining this tragedy, was as unfounded as the claim of the piece itself to popularity. The Morning Chronicle for March 8, 1784, says, "The performance of the Countess of Salisbury, by Mrs. Siddons, turned out but an unhappy experiment, the play being so infamously underwritten, that even her great acting could not keep it from ridicule; and when Smith came on the stage to give it out for a second

representation, he was saluted with a horselaugh."

Whilst acting in " Tancred," for her second benefit, April 24th,* she was at least adorning the drama of an acknowledged poet, and that which is generally thought the most successful of Thomson's plays. We are told† that Garrick was very great in Tancred, and that Mrs. Cibber was harmony itself in Sigismunda. Mrs. Siddons, in the opinion of those who remembered her great predecessor in the part, fell nothing short of her, in the eloquence of her eye gesture, and she made the death of Sigismunda tenderly perfect. Yet, in spite of this assurance, and of all my reverence for the poet of the Seasons, and the Castle of Indolence, I cannot imagine the powers of our actress in

and

* Tancred, Kemble; Siffredi, Bensley; Osmond, Farren.

+ Murphy's Life of Garrick.