Her name is not given: she is only called Miss Sarah. She had some disposition, it is said, for the stage; and Hamilton tells us, that after Lord Rochester "had entertained both the niece and the aunt for some months in the country, he got her entered in the king's company of comedians the next winter; and the public was obliged to him for the prettiest, but at the same time the worst actress in the kingdom." This, the annotators tell us, was Mrs. Barry—"famous Mrs. Barry," as she was called; and we have a long, rambling, incorrect history of the lady in consequence. Surely, however, the description is not at all applicable to Mrs. Barry, who was so far from being the prettiest and the worst actress, that she was the ugliest and the best. Look at her portrait at Hampton Court in Kneller's large picture of King William on horseback! She was anything but pretty. "And yet this fine creature," says Tony Aston, "was not handsome, her mouth opening most on the right side, which she strove to draw in t'other way,"—a very indifferent account of the "prettiest actress."
But let us come to dates. When was Mrs. Barry born? She departed this life, her monument at Acton tells us, on the 7th of November, 1713, aged fifty-five years. She was, consequently, born in
