An effect from a stage performance which some still live to remember, when it found a parallel in the passion which George IV., when Prince of Wales, evinced for Mrs. Robinson, while playing the part of Perdita in "A Winter's Tale." What a true name is Perdita indeed for such a fate, and what a lesson may a young actress learn from the story of poor Mrs. Robinson, when told, as I have heard it told, by her grave in Old Windsor churchyard! Nor is Nelly's story without its moral—and now that we have got her from the purlieus of Drury Lane, and the contaminations of the green-room,—for the part of Almahide was her last performance on the stage,[1]—we shall find her true to the King, and evincing in her own way more good than we should have expected to have found from so bad a bringing up.
- ↑ The Mrs. Gwyn or Quyn who appeared on the stage while Nelly was alive, was a different person, though hitherto always confounded with her. I had come to this conclusion, when I was pleased to find my conviction made good by a MS. note by Isaac Reed, in his copy of the first edition of the Roscius Anglicanus, in my possession. Downes distinguishes Nelly by calling her "Madam Gwin," or "Mrs. Ellen Gwin;"—the other is always "Mrs. Gwin."
