ciative friends at Bath, and, curiously enough, hesitated at the last moment about accepting; so that Whalley's congratulatory poem on her engagement at Drury Lane, contributed to Lady Miller's "Roman Vase," was a little premature. At last, however, her departure was formally announced, and she took her farewell benefit. She acted in the Distressed Mother and The Devil to Pay, and then came forward and recited some lines of her own composition, of which we give the reader only a short sample, as the "Virgin Muse" does not soar very high:—
Have I not raised some expectation here?
"Wrote by herself? What! authoress and player?
True, we have heard her"—thus I guess'd you'd say—
"With decency recite another's lay;
But never heard, nor ever could we dream,
Herself had sipp'd the Heliconian stream."
Perhaps you farther said—Excuse me, pray,
For thus supposing all that you might say—
"What will she treat of in this same address?
Is it to show her learning? Can you guess?"
Here let me answer: No. Far different views
Possess'd my soul, and fired my virgin Muse.
'Twas honest gratitude, at whose request
Sham'd be the heart that will not do its best!
She then informs them they must part; that, if only she meets as much kindness elsewhere,
Envy, o'ercome, will hurl her pointless dart,
And critic gall be shed without its smart.
Nothing would drag her from Bath, she says, but one thing; here she went to the wing and led forward her children:—
These are the moles that bear me from your side,
Where I was rooted—where I could have died.
The moles now numbered three, her second daughter
