to nag and fight about trifles, and at the same time often too self-absorbed to remember how she offended the susceptibilities of others.
"To live in a state of contention," she writes, "with a brother I so tenderly love, and with a husband with whom I am to spend what remains of life, would be more than my subdued spirit and almost broken heart would be able to endure. In answer to the second, I can only say that the testimony of the wisdom of all ages, from the foundation of the world to this day, is childishness and folly, if happiness be anything more than a name; and, I am assured, our own experience will not allow us to refute the opinion. No, no, it is the inhabitant of a better world. Content, the offspring of Moderation, is all we ought to aspire to here, and Moderation will be our best and surest guide to that happiness to which she will most assuredly conduct us."
In the season of 1806-7, at Covent Garden, she played Queen Katherine seven times, Lady Macbeth (to Cooke's Macbeth) five times, Isabella (Fatal Marriage) twice, Elvira twice, Lady Randolph once, Mrs. Beverley once, Euphrasia once, and Volumnia fifteen times. We see by this enumeration of her parts how she, and she alone, achieved popularity for Shakespeare.
The subsequent season at Covent Garden was uncommonly short, and extended only to the 11th of December 1807, when the Winter's Tale was announced for her last appearance before Easter. As events turned out, it proved to be her last for the season. Immediately after the performance she went to Bath, where she spent six weeks with Mr. Siddons. He was so much improved in health as to make plans
