It certainly was a dazzling creature. She had a head of beautiful form,
perched like a bird upon a throat massive yet shapely and smooth as a
column of alabaster, a symmetrical brow, black eyes full of fire and
tenderness, a delicious mouth, with a hundred varying expressions, and
that marvelous faculty of giving beauty alike to love or scorn, a sneer
or a smile. But she had one feature more remarkable than all, her
eyebrows -- the actor's feature; they were jet black, strongly marked,
and in repose were arched like a rainbow; but it was their extraordinary
flexibility which made other faces upon the stage look sleepy beside
Margaret Woffington's. In person she was considerably above the middle
height, and so finely formed that one could not determine the exact
character of her figure. At one time it seemed all stateliness, at
another time elegance personified, and flowing voluptuousness at another.
She was Juno, Psyche, Hebe, by turns, and for aught we know at will.

It must be confessed that a sort of halo of personal grandeur surrounds a
great actress. A scene is set; half a dozen nobodies are there lost in
it, because they are and seem lumps of nothing. The great artist steps
upon that scene, and how she fills it in a moment! Mind and majesty wait
upon her in the air; her person is lost in the greatness of her personal
presence; she dilates with _thought,_ and a stupid giantess looks a dwarf
beside her.

No wonder then that Mr. Vane felt overpowered by this torch in a closet.
To vary the metaphor, it seemed to him, as she swept up and down, as if
the green-room was a shell, and this glorious creature must burst it and
be free. Meantime, the others saw a pretty actress studying her business;
and Cibber saw a dramatic school-girl learning what he presumed to be a
very silly set of words. Sir C. Pomander's eye had been on her the moment