nd of barbarism did not stand in the way of an almost childish gaiety.
In Yorkshire, we find the Inchbalds, the Siddonses, and Kemble retiring
to the moors, in the intervals of business, to play blindman's buff or
puss in the corner. Such were the pastimes of Mrs. Siddons before the
days of her fame. No doubt this kind of lightheartedness was the best
antidote to the experience of being "saluted with volleys of potatoes
and broken bottles", as the Siddonses were by the citizens of Liverpool,
for having ventured to appear on their stage without having ever played
before the King. On this occasion, the audience, according to a letter
from Kemble to Mrs. Inchbald, "extinguished all the lights round the
house; then jumped upon the stage; brushed every lamp out with their
hats; took back their money; left the theatre, and determined themselves
to repeat this till they have another company." These adventures were
diversified by a journey to Paris, undertaken in the hope that Mr.
Inchbald, who found himself without engagements, might pick up a
livelihood as a painter of miniatures. The scheme came to nothing, and
the Inchbalds eventually went to Hull, where they returned to their old
profession. Here, in 1779, suddenly and somewhat mysteriously, Mr.
Inchbald died. To his widow the week that followed was one of "grief,
horror, and almost despair"; but soon, with her old pertinacity, she was
back at her work, settling at last in London, and becoming a member of
the Covent Garden company. Here, for the next five years, she earned for
herself a meagre living, until, quite unexpectedly, deliverance came. In
her moments of leisure she had been trying her hand upon dramatic
composition; she had written some farces, and, in 1784, one of them, _A
Mogul Tale_, was accepted, acted, and obtained a great success. This was
the turning-point of her career. She followed up her farce with a series
of plays, either original or adapted, which, almost without exception,
were well received, so that she was soon able to retire from the stage
with a comfortable competence. She had succeeded in life; she was happy,
respected, free.

Mrs. Inchbald's plays are so bad that it is difficult to believe that
they brought her a fortune. But no doubt it was their faults that made
them popular--their sentimentalities, their melodramatic absurdities,
their strangely false and high-pitched moral tone. They are written in
a jargon which resembles, if it resembles