the prosecution of her art, hurried her into bitterness and an unjust feeling of rancour against Garrick, which an examination of the circumstances of the case in no way warrants. One of the Kemble weaknesses was a proud sensitiveness to anything like slight or neglect, and these slights were as often as not phantoms of their own imaginations.
It gives one a mournful sense of injustice to see the charge of jealousy she openly brings repeated by the earlier biographer who wrote about her—when we, who have fuller light thrown upon the great actor's life by the publication of his correspondence, know how free he was from the besetting sins of his craft. To be popular, a man must have the faults of those among whom he is placed. Garrick was called stingy because he did not throw away his money like his colleagues; stiff, because he was a moral man amidst a laxity of manners that has become proverbial; jealous, because he placed the honour of his art and his theatre above personal considerations. He was an object of envy because of his unparalleled success. The two clouds which veiled the nobility of his character—love of money and love of fine friends—vanished like mists in the sunshine if he were really called upon to help a case of distress or take notice of an old friend. These faults were harped upon, however, by Johnson, Foote, and hosts of others. Well might Garrick, in the evening of his days, sitting on the terrace of his house at Twickenham, make the, for him, bitter observation, "I have not always met gratitude in a play-house."
It was at the time, no doubt, a salve to Mrs. Siddons's disappointment to listen to the specious Mr. Sheridan's insinuation of Garrick's jealousy; but it is a curious fact, if Sheridan were sincere in his statements, that
