"Virginia," acted in 1754. To the last, however, the unhappy man
continued to brood over the injustice of the manager and the pit,
and tried to convince himself and others that he had missed the
highest literary honours only because he had omitted some fine
passages in compliance with Garrick's judgment. Alas for human
nature, that the wounds of vanity should smart and bleed so much
longer than the wounds of affection! Few people, we believe,
whose nearest friends and relations died in 1754, had any acute
feeling of the loss in 1782. Dear sisters, and favourite
daughters, and brides snatched away before the honeymoon was
passed, had been forgotten, or were remembered only with a
tranquil regret. But Samuel Crisp was still mourning for his
tragedy, like Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be
comforted. "Never," such was his language twenty-eight years
after his disaster, "never give up or alter a tittle unless it
perfectly coincides with your inward feelings. I can say this to
my sorrow and my cost. But mum!" Soon after these words were
written, his life--a life which might have been eminently useful
and happy--ended in the same gloom in which, during more than a
quarter of a century, it had been passed. We have thought it
worth while to rescue from oblivion this curious fragment of
literary history. It seems to us at once ludicrous, melancholy,
and full of instruction.(11)

Page xxiii

Crisp was an old and very intimate friend of the Burneys.
To them alone was confided the name of the desolate old hall in
which he hid himself like a wild beast in a den. For them were
reserved such remains of his humanity as had survived the failure