"And the breadth of their hands, too," said Pomander, waking from a nap.

"It is the depth of their hearts she has sounded," said Vane.

In those days, if a metaphor started up, the poor thing was coursed up
hill and down dale, and torn limb from jacket; even in Parliament, a
trope was sometimes hunted from one session into another.

"You were asking me about Mrs. Oldfield, sir," resumed Cibber, rather
peevishly. "I will own to you, I lack words to convey a just idea of her
double and complete supremacy. But the comedians of this day are
weak-strained _farceurs_ compared with her, and her tragic tone was
thunder set to music.

"I saw a brigadier-general cry like a child at her Indiana; I have seen
her crying with pain herself at the wing (for she was always a great
sufferer), I have seen her then spring upon the stage as Lady Townley,
and in a moment sorrow brightened into joy: the air seemed to fill with
singing-birds, that chirped the pleasures of fashion, love and youth in
notes sparkling like diamonds and stars and prisms. She was above
criticism, out of its scope, as is the blue sky; men went not to judge
her, they drank her, and gazed at her, and were warmed at her, and
refreshed by her. The fops were awed into silence, and with their humbler
betters thanked Heaven for her, if they thanked it for anything.

"In all the crowded theater, care and pain and poverty were banished from
the memory, while Oldfield's face spoke, and her tongue flashed melodies;
the lawyer forgot his quillets; the polemic, the mote in his brother's
eye; the old maid, her grudge against the two sexes; the old man, his