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68 diately after the impecunious Irishman took the reins of government. There were hardly any names of note now to be seen on the bills except those of Smith, Palmer, and King, and they openly talked of deserting the sinking ship.

There is something almost heroic, therefore, in the appearance of the young actress on the boards of Drury Lane at this particular juncture. Alone and unaided, against enormous odds, she saved the famous theatre, endeared to every lover of dramatic art, from artistic and financial ruin. She had hitherto proved herself to have indomitable industry and energy, to have all the qualities of a hard-working, painstaking artist; now she was suddenly to flash forth in all the splendour of her genius and power. And yet how simple and womanly she remained. There was no undue reliance on her own gifts, in spite of the indiscriminate praise that had been heaped on her at Bath by too zealous friends. She turned a deaf ear to Miss Seward—"all asterisks and exclamations," and to Dr. Whalley—"all sighs and admiration"; but listened to the wise suggestions of Mr. Linley and of old Sheridan, the father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, himself a retired actor with full knowledge of the stage and its requirements. She and they were afraid her voice was not equal to filling a large London theatre. "But we soon had reason to think," she tells us, "that the bad construction of the Bath theatre, and not the weakness of my voice was the cause of our mutual fears."

Isabella, in Southerne's pathetic play of The Fatal Marriage, was the part Sheridan recommended her to choose for her first appearance, and the selection showed his appreciative knowledge both of her powers