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126 her. Smith, popularly known as "Gentleman Smith" because he generally did the light and airy part of lover in comedy parts, was the Macbeth, Brereton the Macduff, and Bensley the Banquo; and the memory of the popularity of Mrs. Pritchard in the part, seemed to stand between her and her audience. She had already begged Dr. Johnson to let her know his opinion of Mrs. Pritchard, whom she had never seen, and she tells us in her Autograph Recollections that he answered:—

"'Madam, she was a vulgar idiot; she used to speak of her "gownd," and she never read any part in a play in which she acted except her own. She no more thought of the play out of which her part was taken than a shoemaker thinks of the skin out of which the piece of leather of which he is making a pair of shoes is cut.' Is it possible, thought I, that Mrs. Pritchard, the greatest of all the Lady Macbeths, should never have read the play? and I concluded that the Doctor must have been misinformed; but I was afterwards assured by a gentleman, a friend of Mrs. Pritchard, that he had supped with her one night after she had acted Lady Macbeth, and that she declared she had never perused the whole tragedy. I cannot believe it."

It would seem difficult to such a worker as Mrs. Siddons to conceive the possibility of a woman not mastering the whole play if she had to act the part of Lady Macbeth, but we think Dr. Johnson must have been too severe when he called an actress who for years had held the stage with Garrick "a vulgar idiot." And there is little doubt that the tradition of her acting in the part of Lady Macbeth still had a firm hold on the memory of the audience. As a proof of this