bothers about the paragraphs, because she is sure to get them.

To return to the more congenial subject of Oldfield, it is strange
that so shrewd a Thespian as Cibber (who seems to have been clever in
all things but poetry) was so long in coming to a real appreciation of
her genius. He is manly enough to confess that not even the silvery
tone of that honeyed voice could, "'till after some time incline my
ear to any hope in her favour." "But public approbation," he tells us,
"is the warm weather of a theatrical plant, which will soon bring it
forward to whatever perfection nature has design'd it. However, Mrs.
Oldfield (perhaps for want of fresh parts) seem'd to come but slowly
forward 'till the year 1703." So slowly had she come forward indeed,
that in 1702, Gildon, a now forgotten critic and dramatist, included
her among the "meer Rubbish that ought to be swept off the stage with
the Filth and Dust."[A] Time has avenged the actress for this slight;
who, excepting the student of theatrical history, remembers Gildon?

[Footnote A: From the "Comparison Between the Two Stages."]

What is more to the purpose, Nance was able to avenge herself in the
flesh, only a few months after these contemptuous lines had been
penned. It happened at Bath, in the summer of 1703, and the story of
her triumph, brief as it is, sounds quaint and pretty, as it comes
down to us laden with a thousand suggestions of fashionable life in
the reign of Queen Anne--a life made up of gossip and cards, drinking,
gaming, patches and powder, fine clothes, full perriwigs and empty
heads. What a picturesque lot of people there must have been at the
great English spa that season, all anxious to get a glimpse of her
plump majesty, who was staying there, and all willing enough to do
anything except to test the waters or the baths from which the place