will
honor me by selecting a few of my dresses, you will gratify me, and
I shall fancy I see myself upon the stage to greater advantage than
before.'"

"And what did Statira answer, sir?" said Mr. Vane, eagerly.

"She answered thus: 'Madam, the town has often been wrong, and may have
been so last night, in supposing that I vied successfully with your
merit; but this much is certain--and here, madam, I am the best
judge--that off the stage you have just conquered me. I shall wear
with pride any dress you have honored, and shall feel inspired to great
exertions by your presence among our spectators, unless, indeed, the
sense of your magnanimity and the recollection of your talent should
damp me by the dread of losing any portion of your good opinion.'"

"What a couple of stiff old things," said Mrs. Clive.

"Nay, madam, say not so," cried Vane, warmly; "surely, this was the
lofty courtesy of two great minds not to be overbalanced by strife,
defeat, or victory."

"What were their names, sir?"

"Statira was the great Mrs. Oldfield. Roxana you will see here
to-night."

This caused a sensation.

Colley's reminiscences were interrupted by loud applause from the
theater; the present seldom gives the past a long hearing.

The old war-horse cocked his ears.

"It is Woffington speaking the epilogue," said Quin.

"Oh, she has got the length of their foot, somehow," said a small
actress.

"And the breadth of their hands, too," said Pomander, waking from a nap.

"It is the depth of their hearts she has sounded," said Vane.

In those days, if a metaphor started up, the poor thing was coursed up
hill and down dale, and torn limb from jacket; even in Parliament, a
trope was sometimes hunted from one session into another.

"You were asking me about Mrs. Oldfield, sir," resumed Cibber, rather
peevishly. "I will own to you, I lack words to convey a just idea of
her double and complete supremacy. But the comedians of this day are
weak-strained _farceurs_ compared with her, and her tragic tone was
thunder set to music.

"I saw a brigadier-general cry like a child at her Indiana; I have seen
her crying with pain herself at the wing (for she was always a great
sufferer), I have seen her then spring upon the stage as Lady Townley,
and in a moment sorrow brightened into joy: the air seemed to fill with
singing-birds, that chirped the pleasures of fashion, love and youth
in notes sparkling like diamonds and stars and prisms.