chatting with me by the door the whole time, and saying comical
things upon royal personages in tragedies, particularly Princess
Augusta, who has a great deal of sport in her disposition. She
very gravely asserted she thought some of those princes on the
stage looked really quite as well as some she knew off it.

Once about this time I went to a play myself, which surely I may
live long enough and never forget. It was "Seduction," a very
clever piece, but containing a dreadful picture of vice and
dissipation in high life, written by Mr. Miles Andrews, with an
epilogue--O, such an epilogue! I was listening to it with
uncommon attention, from a compliment paid in it to Mrs. Montagu,
among other female writers; but imagine what became of my
attention when I suddenly was struck with these lines, or
something like them:--

Let sweet Cecilia gain your just applause, Whose every passion
yields to Reason's laws."

To hear, wholly unprepared and unsuspicious, such lines in a
theatre--seated in a royal box--and with the whole royal family
and their suite immediately opposite me--was it not a singular
circumstance? To describe my embarrassment would be impossible.
My whole head was leaning forward, with my opera glass in my
hand, examining Miss Farren, who spoke the epilogue. Instantly I
shrank back, so astonished and so ashamed of my public situation,
that I was almost ready to take to my heels and run, for it
seemed as if I were there purposely in that conspicuous place--

"To list attentive to my own applause."