Royal, Covent Garden.

In those days, the artists of the pen and the brush ferreted patrons,
instead of aiming to be indispensable to the public, the only patron
worth a single gesture of the quill.

Mr. Vane had conversed with Triplet, that is, let Triplet talk to him in
a coffee-house, and Triplet, the most sanguine of unfortunate men, had
already built a series of expectations upon that interview, when this
note arrived. Leaving him on his road from Lambeth to Covent Garden, we
must introduce more important personages.

Mr. Vane was a wealthy gentleman from Shropshire, whom business had
called to London four months ago, and now pleasure detained. Business
still occupied the letters he sent now and then to his native county; but
it had ceased to occupy the writer. He was a man of learning and taste,
as times went; and his love of the Arts had taken him some time before
our tale to the theaters, then the resort of all who pretended to taste;
and it was thus he had become fascinated by Mrs. Woffington, a lady of
great beauty, and a comedian high in favor with the town.

The first night he saw her was an epoch in the history of this
gentleman's mind. He had learning and refinement, and he had not great
practical experience, and such men are most open to impression from the
stage. He saw a being, all grace and bright nature, move like a goddess
among the stiff puppets of the scene; her glee and her pathos were
equally catching, she held a golden key at which all the doors of the
heart flew open. Her face, too, was as full of goodness as
intelligence--it was like no other farce; the heart bounded to meet it.