However, we ran them over with a mutual inadvertency of one another.

I seem'd careless, as concluding that any assistance I could give her would be to little or no purpose; and she mutter'd out her words in a sort of mifty manner at my low opinion of her.

But when the play came to be acted, she had just occasion to triumph over the error of my judgment, by the (almost) amazement that her unexpected performance awak'd me to; so forward and sudden a step into nature I had never seen; and what made her performance more valuable was that I knew it all proceeded from her own understanding, untaught and unassisted by any one more experienced actor." * * * * * In the original text, Cibber, in pursuance of that old-fashioned method of capitalising every third or fourth word without any particular rhyme or reason, has spelled occasion with a big O.Well he might, for it was, perhaps, the most important occasion in all the eventful life of Oldfield.

She would win many a more popular triumph in days to come, but what were all of them compared to the honour of having compelled the writer to admit that he had blundered.
"Though this part of Leonora in itself was of so little value, that when she got more into esteem it was one of the several she gave away to inferior actresses; yet it was the first (as I have observed) that corrected my judgment of her, and confirmed me in a strong belief that she could not fail in very little time of being what she was afterwards allow'd to be, the foremost ornament of our Theatre." It takes but slight exercise of fancy to see inside the stuffy little theatre of Bath, on that memorable summer afternoon, when "Sir Courtly Nice"[A] is produced, with Cibber in the foppish title-role and the fair unknown as Leonora, "Belguard's sister, in love with Farewell." Her fat, peaceful, and phlegmatic Majesty, Anne Stuart, is in the royal box, perhaps (although she is far from being a playgoer), and with her retinue may be seen her dearest of friends, Sarah Churchill, now Duchess of Marlborough, and the most brilliant political Amazon of her time.

How appropriate, by-the-way, that they should be together at the comedy.