and third child, Maria, having been born on 1st July 1779.
Stand forth, ye elves! and plead your mother's cause,
Ye little magnets, whose soft influence draws
Me from a point where every gentle breeze
Wafted my bark to happiness and ease—
Sends me adventurous on a larger main,
In hopes that you may profit by my gain.
Have I been hasty? Am I, then, to blame?
Answer, all ye who own a parent's name!
Thus have I tired you with an untaught muse,
Who for your favour still most humbly sues;
That you for classic learning will receive
My soul's best wishes, which I freely give—
For polished periods round, and touched with art,
The fervent offering of my grateful heart.
So Mrs. Siddons made her bow. When she next appeared at Bath it was as the greatest tragic actress then on the stage.
Towards the end of August, she set out determined to make her way slowly to London, acting at various country theatres as she went along. Her letters written to the Whalleys are full of fun, and show she had the pen of a ready writer.
"You will be pleased to hear," she says, "that Mrs. Carr was very civil to me—gave me a comfortable bed, and I slept very well. We were five of us in the machine, all females but one, a youth of about sixteen, and the most civilized being you can conceive—a native of Bristol, too.
"One of the ladies was, I believe verily, a little insane. Her dress was the most peculiar, and manner the most offensive, I ever remember to have met with; her person was taller and more thin than you can imagine; her hair raven black, drawn as tight as possible over her cushion before and behind; and at the top of her head was placed a solitary fly-cap of the last
