don’t you tell the little gentleman whether you’ll meet him or no?” This entirely disconcerted Quin, and the contest was decided in favour of his rival.
Mr. Jephson,[1] who knew him, told me however that his manner of reciting in private, though pompous, had a certain natural weight and dignity which, after you were a little used to it, was not disagreeable. He was fond of quoting Milton—the only English poet that he much studied except Shakspeare; and so little was the latter author read at that time, and so false the taste of that age, that Quin, who very frequently used to repeat passages of Macbeth in company, always quoted the wretched alteration of that drama made by Sir Wm. Davenant and published in 1674. Probably he had never read the original play. So little relish had the nation in general for the real beauties of Shakspeare, and so little was he read, that this insult to his memory was suffered to keep possession of the stage for nearly seventy years. It is a singular circumstance that the late Mrs. Pritchard, who was celebrated in the part of Lady Macbeth, owned not long before she died that she had never read the play, nor knew any more of it than what was contained in her own part, written for her by the prompter.
Darius Tibertus, an Italian, abridged the Lives of Plutarch, in Latin; but I have never met with the book.
- ↑ The dramatist.
