No road, not even a sheepwalk, connected his lonely dwelling with the abodes of men.  The place of his retreat was strictly concealed from his old associates.  In the spring, he sometimes emerged, and was seen at exhibitions and concerts in London.  But he soon disappeared and hid himself, with no society but his books, in his dreary hermitage.  He survived his failure about thirty years.  A new generation sprang up around him.  No memory of his bad verses remained among men.  His very name was forgotten.  How completely the world had lost sight of him will appear from a single circumstance.  We looked for his name in a copious Dictionary of Dramatic Authors published while he was still alive, and we found only that Mr. Samuel Crisp, of the Custom-house, had written a play called “Virginia,” acted in 1754.  To the last, however, the unhappy man continued to brood over the injustice of the manager and the pit, and tried to convince himself and others that he had missed the highest literary honours only because he had omitted some fine passages in compliance with Garrick’s judgment.  Alas for human nature, that the wounds of vanity should smart and bleed so much longer than the wounds of affection!  Few people, we believe, whose nearest friends and relations died in 1754, had any acute feeling of the loss in 1782.  Dear sisters, and favourite daughters, and brides snatched away before the honeymoon was passed, had been forgotten, or were remembered only with a tranquil regret.  But Samuel Crisp was still mourning for his tragedy, like Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted.  “Never,” such was his language twenty-eight years after his disaster, “never give up or alter a tittle unless it perfectly coincides with your inward feelings.  I can say this to my sorrow and my cost.  But mum!” Soon after these words were written, his life—­a life which might have been eminently useful and happy—­ended in the same gloom in which, during more than a quarter of a century, it had been passed.  We have thought it worth while to rescue from oblivion this curious fragment of literary history.  It seems to us at once ludicrous, melancholy, and full of instruction.(11)

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Crisp was an old and very intimate friend of the Burneys.  To them alone was confided the name of the desolate old hall in which he hid himself like a wild beast in a den.  For them were reserved such remains of his humanity as had survived the failure of his play.  Frances Burney he regarded as his daughter.  He called her his Fannikin; and she in return called him her dear Daddy.  In truth, he seems to have done much more than her real father for the development of her intellect ; for though he was a bad poet, he was a scholar, a thinker, and an excellent counsellor.  He was particularly fond of Dr. Burney’s concerts.  They had indeed, been commenced at his suggestion, and when he visited London he constantly attended them.  But when he grew old, and when gout, brought