Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 2.djvu/129

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FITZGERALD. 125 Wilks the actor, to go to him and represent—that she advised him to make some alteration in the catastrophe of the piece; for that she was apprehensive the firm manner in which he had bestowed the hand of Mrs. Sullen upon Archer, without first procuring a divorce from her husband, would offend great part of the audience. “Oh s* replied Farquhar, gaily, “tell her, I wish she was married to me instead of Sullen ; for then, without the trouble of a divorce, I would give her my bond that she should be a widow within a few days.” In this allusion he was pro phetic; and the apparent calmness with which he expected his dissolution, may be reasonably accounted for on the supposition that the profligate and selfish characters which he had pourtrayed in his comedies, were such as he had uniformly met with in the world—and he was rejoiced to leave them behind. JONATHAN FISHER, A landscape painter, was a native of Dublin. He was originally a woollen-draper in the Liberty; was self edu cated, and patronised by Lord Portarlington. About the year 1782, he published a set of Views of the Lake of Killarney, which were engraved in London from his paint ings. He held a situation in the Stamp Office till his decease, which happened in 1812. CATHERINE FITZGERALD, Countess of Desmond, who attained the age of one hundred and forty-five years, was daughter of the House of Drumana, in the county of Waterford, and second wife to James, the twelfth Earl of Desmond, to whom she was married in the reign of Edward IV. ; and being on that occasion presented at court, had the honour of dancing with the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard the Third, whom she (in conversation with Lady Dacre) averred, was the best made man in the room except the