office: in his _Table Talk_ he gives the following portraiture of
their theatrical successes:--

What squabbles we used to have about Kean and Miss Stephens, the only
theatrical favourites I ever had! Mrs. Billington had got some notion
that Miss Stephens would never make a singer, and it was the torment of
Perry's life (as he told me in confidence) that he could not get any two
people to be of the same opinion on any one point. I shall not easily
forget bringing him my account of her first appearance in the
_Beggar's Opera_. I have reason to remember that article: it was
almost the last I ever wrote with any pleasure to myself. I had been
down on a visit to my friends near Chertsey, and, on my return, had
stopped at an inn at Kingston-upon-Thames, where I had got the
_Beggar's Opera_, and had read it overnight. The next day I walked
cheerfully to town. It was a fine sunny morning, in the end of autumn,
and as I repeated the beautiful song, "Life knows no return of spring,"
I meditated my next day's criticism, trying to do all the justice I
could to so inviting a subject. I was not a little proud of it by
anticipation. I had just then begun to stammer out my sentiments on
paper, and was in a kind of honey-moon of authorship.

I deposited my account of the play at the _Morning Chronicle_
office in the afternoon, and went to see Miss Stephens as Polly. Those
were happy times, in which she first came out in this character, in
Mandane, where she sang the delicious air, "If o'er the cruel tyrant
Love," (so as it can never be sung again,) in _Love in a Village_,
where the scene opened with her and Miss Matthews in a painted garden of
roses and honeysuckles, and "Hope thou nurse of young Desire," thrilled
from two sweet voices in turn. Oh! may my ears sometimes still drink the
same sweet sounds, embalmed with the spirit of youth, of health, and