d her
from any important playing part. Her opportunity came, however, when
a favorite actress who was to take the part of Ophelia was, at the
eleventh hour, incapacitated from so doing. There was no recourse
but to permit Peggy Woffington to take it. Notwithstanding the
difficulties under which she labored, her interpretation of the
character was quite favorably received. She had been developing in
grace of figure and of feature, and had ripened into a young woman of
dazzling fairness, perfect form, with eyes luminous and black, shaded
by long lashes and arched by exquisitely pencilled eyebrows.

She was just twenty years of age when she completely turned the heads
of the Dublin theatre-goers by the magnificence of her impersonation
of Sir Harry Wildare in _The Constant Couple_. Her first appearance
in London was not at the behest of her art, but, unfortunately, as a
result of the arts of an admirer to whose addresses she had given some
favor, and who led her to go to the English metropolis with him under
promise of marriage. This regrettable circumstance was soon followed
by her repudiation of the man on finding out his real character. She
was not long off the stage, and in 1740 the playbills announced the
first appearance of Miss Woffington in England. She drew large houses,
and greatly widened her reputation as a leading actress of her time.
To give the plays in which she took principal parts during her first
London season would be to enumerate the best productions of the
English stage at that time. It is said of her that before the season
was half over, Miss Woffington had become the fashion. Among the many
swains who followed in her wake and indited to her amorous
missives and verses was Garrick. He pursued his lovemaking with all
seriousness, and made his assault not solely upon the heart of the
butterfly beauty, but upon her mind as well. He saw that beneath all
the audacities of her mind and irregularities of life there was a
noble nature, which the circumstances of her birth and training
had never permitted true expression. His intentions were entirely
honorable, but whenever the subject of marriage was broached by him
she managed to switch off the conversation to a lighter subject. Her
coquettishness would not permit her to take seriously the addresses
of the man whom she doubtless greatly admired and loved. When she
was regarded by everyone else as without a moral equivalent for her
artistic temperament, Gar