Yet any one would sing a bad song, provided nobody else had a good one, till at last they were thrown together like so many feather'd warriors, for a battle-royal in a cock-pit, where every one was oblig'd to kill another to save himself! What pity it was these froward misses and masters of musick had not been engag'd to entertain the court of some King of Morocco, that could have known a good opera from a bad one! With how much ease would such a director have brought them to better order?
But alas! as it has been said of greater things, "'Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit.' "Imperial Rome fell by the too great strength of its own citizens! So fell this mighty opera, ruin'd by the too great excellency of its singers! For, upon the whole, it proved to be as barbarously bad as if Malice itself had composed it." It was a pity, no doubt, that the light of opera shone but dimly at the Haymarket, yet the ill wind which almost extinguished that light blew a blessing towards the nimble Santlow.

For the dear creature prospered exceeding well as Dorcas Zeal; the heart of the public waxed warm toward the ex-dancer, and so did the cardiac organ of Barton Booth.

A few years later Booth married the charmer, and she, having become virtuous and prim, made the remainder of his life a bed of domestic roses.
And now for the brief story of Booth's dignified career.

Barton came of good English stock, and his father, with a true British desire to rule the destinies of his family, mapped out a clerical life for the boy.

But the latter had no thought of the pulpit, and from the time that he acted in the "Andria" of Terence, at Westminster School, his hope was all for the stage.