enry Crisp, of the
Custom House, had written a play called Virginia, acted in 1754. To the
last, however, the unhappy man continued to brood over the injustice of
the manager and the pit, and tried to convince himself and others that
he had missed the highest literary honors, only because he had omitted
some fine passages in compliance with Garrick's judgment. Alas, for
human nature, that the wounds of vanity should smart and bleed so much
longer than the wounds of affection! Few people, we believe, whose
nearest friends and relations died in 1754, had any acute feeling of the
loss in 1782. Dear sisters, and favorite daughters, and brides snatched
away before the honeymoon was passed, had been forgotten, or were
remembered only with a tranquil regret. But Samuel Crisp was still
mourning for his tragedy, like Rachel weeping for her children, and
would not be comforted. "Never," such was his language twenty-eight
years after his disaster, "never give up or alter a tittle unless it
perfectly coincides with your own inward feelings. I can say this to my
sorrow and my cost. But mum!" Soon after these words were written, his
life--a life which might have been eminently useful and happy--ended in
the same gloom in which, during more than a quarter of a century, it had
been passed. We have thought it worth while to rescue from oblivion this
curious fragment of literary history. It seems to us at once ludicrous,
melancholy, and full of instruction.

Crisp was an old and very intimate friend of the Burneys. To them alone
was confided the name of the desolate old hall in which he hid himself
like a wild beast in a den. For them were reserved such remains of his
humanity as had survived the failure of his play. Frances Burney he
regarded as his daughter. He called her his Fannikin; and she in return
called him her dear Daddy. In truth, he seems to have done much more
than her real parents for the development of her intellect; for though
he was a bad poet, he was a scholar, a thinker, and an excellent
counsellor. He was particularly fond of the concerts in Poland Street.
They had, indeed, been commenced at his suggestion, and when he visited
London he constantly attended them. But when he grew old, and when gout,
brought on partly by mental irritation, confined him to his retreat, he
was desirous of having a glimpse of that gay and brilliant world from
which he was exiled, and he pressed Fannikin to send him full accounts
of her fat