sixty-one, Horace Walpole was present at a
performance of this kind in Holland House,
which greatly entertained him. But the account
of it had better be given in his own words.

"I was excessively amused (says he) on
Tuesday night. There was a play at Holland
House, acted by children; not all children,
for Lady Sarah Lenox and Lady Susan
Strangeways played the women. It was Jane
Shore. Mr. Price, Lord Barrington's nephew,
was Gloster, and acted better than three parts
of the comedians; Charles Fox, Hastings; a
little Nichols, who spoke well, Belmour; Lord
Ofaly, Lord Ashbroke, and other boys, did
the rest. But the two girls were delightful,
and acted with so much nature and simplicity,
that they appeared the very things they
represented. Lady Sarah was more beautiful
than you can conceive, and her very
awkwardness gave an air of truth to the shame
of the part and the antiquity of the time,
which was kept up by her dress, taken out
of Montfaucon. Lady Susan was dressed
from Jane Seymour; and all the parts were
clothed in ancient habits, and with the most
minute propriety. When Lady Sarah was in
white, with her hair about her ears, and on
the ground, no Magdalen by Corregio was
half so lovely and expressive. You would
have been charmed, too, with seeing Mrs.
Fox's little boy of six years old, who is beautiful,
and acted the Bishop of Ely, dressed in
lawn sleeves and with a square cap. They
inserted two lines for him, which he could
hardly speak plainly." (This little boy died a
general in the year eighteen hundred and eleven).

So far, so good; and Horace Walpole is
enchanted with young ladies who act plays.
But young ladies who act plays are apt to
become enchanted with actors; and three
years after this performance of Jane Shore, a
catastrophe occurs at Ilchester House, which
makes Horace vituperate such enchantments
as loudly as if he had never encouraged them.
O'Brien, a veritable actor at the public
theatres, runs away with the noble friend of
Jane Shore, the charming Lady Susan; and
the Foxes, and the Walpoles, and all other
admirers of amateur performances, are in
despair; not excepting, of course, the runner
away with the duke's daughter. Horace,
forgetting what he said of Sir Stephen, or
perhaps calling it desperately to mind, declares
that it would have been better had the man
been a footman, because an actor is so well
known, that there is no smuggling him in
among gentlefolk. The worst of it was,
that Horace had not only been loud in praise
of the young lady's theatricals, but had
eulogised this very O'Brien as a better
representative of men of fashion than Garrick
himself. Perhaps it was his eulogy that
made the lady fall in love. And O'Brien was
really a distinguished actor, and probably as
much of a gentleman off the stage as on it.
Nay, to say nothing ot the doubt which has
been thrown upon the legitimacy of Horace
himself (who is suspected to have been the
son of Carr, Lord Hervey), the player may
even have come of a better house than a
Walpole; for the Walpoles, though of an
ancient, were but of a country-gentleman
stock; whereas the name of O'Brien is held
to be a voucher for a man's coming of race
royal. We do not mean by these remarks
to advocate intermarriages between different
ranks. There is well-founded objection to
them in the difference of education and
manners, and the discord which is likely to
ensue on all sides. But their general
unadvisedness must not render us unjust to
exceptions. An Earl of Derby some time
afterwards was thought to have married good
breeding itself in the person of Miss Farren
the actress; and though Mr. O'Brien, instead
of being smuggled in among the gentlefolk
whom he so well represented, was got off
with his wife to America, their after-lives
are recorded as having been equally happy
and respectable. Lady Susan, after all, made
a better match of it with her actor than
Lady Sarah—who married Sir Charles
Bunbury, from whom she was afterwards divorced
—with her baronet.

So much for the plays in Holland House,
and the vicissitudes in the marriages of the
Foxes.

Stephen, second Lord Holland, though by
no means destitute of natural abilities or
vivacity, appears to have had in his
composition too great a predominance of the
animal nature over the spiritual. Hence an
apoplectic tendency, whick took him off at
the age of nine-and-twenty.

But Stephen had a brother, afterwards the
celebrated Charles James Fox, the "man of
the people," who, however he may have
indulged himself in the same way, had life
enough in him to keep him wide awake (and
others too) for nearly twice the time.
Indeed, he may be said, during his youth, to
have had too much life; more animal vitality
in him, and robustness of body to bear it
out, than he well knew what to do with.
And his father is said to have enouraged it
by never thwarting his will in anything.
Thus the boy expressing a desire one day to
"smash a watch," the father, after ascertaining
that the little gentleman did positively
feel such a desire, and was not disposed to
give it up, said, "Well, if you must, I suppose
you must;" and the watch was smashed.
Another time, having been promised that he
should see a portion of a wall pulled down,
and the demolition having taken place while
he was absent, and a new portion supplied,
the latter itself was pulled down, in order
that the father's promise might be kept, and
the boy not disappointed. The keeping of
the promise was excellent, and the wall well
sacrificed; but not so the watch; and much
less the guineas with which his father is
absolutely said to have tempted him to the
gaming table, out of a foolish desire to see