favourites he had, wrote his first theatrical criticism on her in the ‘Morning Chronicle.’ Mrs. Billington told him his idol would never make a singer, but, after hearing her as Polly and as Mandane, arrived at the conclusion that she sang some things as they could never be sung again. Of the same performances Leigh Hunt said that they ‘are like nothing else on the stage, and leave all competition far behind;’ adding that ‘the graceful awkwardness and naïveté of her manner, more captivating than the most finished elegance, complete the charm.’ Talfourd recalled the days when he heard her send forth ‘a stream of such delicious sound as he had never found proceeding from human lips.’ That first impression was never changed. Oxberry bestows more unmixed eulogy upon her than upon any other actress with whom he deals. On her retirement from professional life she carried with her a character for virtue, kindness, and generosity such as few actresses have enjoyed.
A portrait painted by John Jackson hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London; another by Dewilde, as Mandane in ‘Artaxerxes,’ is in the Mathews collection of the Garrick Club, which contains also an anonymous portrait. A portrait of her as Rosetta in ‘Love in a Village,’ showing a bright, sparkling, intelligent face, accompanies the memoir in Oxberry's ‘Dramatic Biography.’ Other portraits of her were painted by Linnell and Sir William John Newton (cf. Cat. Victorian Exhib. Nos. 414, 427).
A Miss Stephens, possibly an elder sister, made, as Polly in the ‘Beggar's Opera,’ a very successful first appearance on the stage on 29 Nov. 1799, and played in 1800 and 1801 Sophia in ‘Of Age To-morrow,’ Violetta in the ‘Egyptian Festival,’ Blanche in Mrs. Plowden's ‘Virginia,’ Rosetta in ‘Love in a Village,’ and other parts.
[Genest's Account of the English Stage; Oxberry's Dramatic Biography, vol. ii.; Dramatic Essays by Hazlitt; Clark Russell's Representative Actors; Theatrical Inquisitor, various years; Grove's Dict. of Music; Georgian Era; Dibdin's Edinburgh Stage; Biography of the British Stage, 1824; Robert's Hannah More, iv. 163; New Monthly Mag. various years; History of the Theatre Royal, Dublin; Liverpool Dramatic Censor; Burke's Peerage; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. xii. 329, 357, 417.]
STEPHENS, CHARLES EDWARD (1821–1892), musician, who was born at 12 Portman Place (now Edgware Road) on 18 March 1821, was nephew to Catherine Stephens, countess of Essex [q. v.] He studied the pianoforte and violin under J. M. Rost, Cipriani Potter, F. Smith, and H. Blagrove, and theory under James Alexander Hamilton [q. v.] After the completion of his school career, he was organist successively to St. Mark's, Myddelton Square; Holy Trinity, Paddington; St. John's, Hampstead; St. Clement Danes and St. Saviour's, Paddington. The last-named post he resigned in 1875. Stephens was a fellow or member of most of the English musical institutions, an original member of the Musical Association in 1874 and treasurer of the Philharmonic in 1880, and of the South-Eastern Section of the National Society of Professional Musicians. He died in London on 13 July 1892, and was buried at Kensal Green.
Stephens was an accomplished musician, a good teacher, an excellent pianist, and in his younger days a capable violinist. His compositions, which are numerous, include a symphony in G minor, played at the Philharmonic in 1891, and a quantity of pianoforte and chamber music. In 1880 Stephens gained both the first and second prizes for string quartets offered by Trinity College, London. He was a clever speaker and writer, as his papers read before the Musical Association bear witness.
[Overture, iii. 86; Brown's Dict. of Musicians furnishes a list of Stephens's compositions; British Musical Biography; Musical Times; Grove's Dict. of Music and Musicians.]
STEPHENS, EDWARD (d. 1706), pamphleteer, was son of Edward Stephens of Norton and Cherington, Gloucestershire, by Mary, daughter of John Raynerford of Staverton, Northamptonshire. He practised for some time at the common-law bar, but afterwards took holy orders. Probably he held no benefice. He published a great number of pamphlets on political and theological subjects, displaying great candour and embodying much valuable research. His friend, Thomas Barlow [q. v.], bishop of Lincoln, considered him an honest and learned lawyer, and Thomas Hearne, the antiquary, says that he was ‘a good common lawyer, great with Judge Hale.’ The only record of Stephens's legal ability is a pamphlet published in 1687, with dedication to Jeffreys, entitled ‘Relief of Apprentices wronged by their Masters, how by our law it may effectually be given and obtained.’ He welcomed the Revolution in ‘The True English Government and Misgovernment of the four last Kings, with the ill consequence thereof briefly noted in two little Tracts,’ 1689, 4to (the first of which appeared under the pseudonym Socrates Christianus). But Stephens animadverted upon the early conduct of the
