LACONIC TRIBUTE TO MACKLIN.

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to the theatre with a preconceived resolution of ruining an actor. Macklin interposed, offering to stop all further proceedings, if the defendants would pay the costs, spend £100 in tickets for his daughter's benefit, the same sum for his own, and a third for the advantage of the manager. And this was agreed to. • Mr. Macklin," said Lord Mansfield; "You never acted better."

The last brilliant years of Garrick, and of the majestic decline of Barry, ensued. With them the poets grew duller and more felonious. Dr. Franklin's "Matilda," Jephson's Matilda," Jephson's "Braganza," and other pieces of less note, were forgotten, in Garrick's Don Felix, played for his last benefit, on the 10th of June, 1776.

He had been accustomed to take his share in the country dance with which this comedy used to end, with unabated vigour, down to the latest period; and he delighted in thus proving that his strength and spirits were unimpaired. On this final night the dance was omitted, and Garrick stepped forward, in front of a splendid and sympathising audience, to take his one and final farewell. For the first time in his life he was troubled, and at this emotion, the house was moved too, rather to tears than to applause. He could pen farewell verses for others, but he could neither write nor deliver them for himself. In a few phrases, which were not so unpremeditated as they appeared to be, he bade his old world adieu! They were in simple and honest prose. "The jingle of rhyme, and the language of fiction, would but illsuit my present feelings," he said; and his good taste was duly appreciated.

Meantime, at Covent Garden, the town damned, condoned, and finally crowned the "Rivals" of Sheridan; who showed that a young fellow of twenty-three could write a comedy, remarkable for wit, good arrangement of plot, and knowledge of men and manners. Hoole's dull" Cleonice," Hull's duller "Edward and Eleonora," and Mason's dullest "Caractacus," were neglected for the most popular of operas-Sheridan's Duenna," which was acted seventy-five times in one season, eclipsing the glory even of the "Beggars' Opera."

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CHAPTER XXXIV.

DAVID GARRICK.

WHEN Garrick commenced his career as actor, he was twenty-five years of age, and a very handsome fellow. Even in his apprentice time, he was an actor of force and intelligence. Three years before he appeared in Goodman's Fields, he played Chamont in the 66 Orphan," at a little theatre called "The Duke's,” in Villiers Street, Strand. The tragedy was got up by, or for, the Eton boys; and Garrick acted so exquisitely, that the ladies offered him their purses and trinkets, from the boxes. In the first burst of his triumph, on the regular stage, Cibber thought the new player "well enough," but Foote, with the malice that was natural to him, remarked, "Yes, the hound has something clever, but if his excellence was to be examined, he would not be found in any part equal to Colley Cibber's Sir John Brute, Lord Foppington, Sir Courtly Nice, or Justice Shallow." "His reception" says the Daily Post, was the most extraordinary and great that was ever known upon such an occasion, and we hear that he obliges the town this evening, with the same performance." The figure of Betterton looking down upon him from between Shakspeare and Dryden, on the ceiling of the theatre, may have stimulated him. Garrick's Hamlet placed him indisputably at the head of his profession, and his Abel Drugger and Archer fixed his pre-eminence in both low and light comedy. In the former comic part, he "extinguished" Theophilus Cibber. Garrick's Abel was awkward, simple, and unobtrusive; there was neither grimace nor gesticulation in it, and he “ convinced those who had seen him in Lear and Richard that there was nothing in human life that such a genius was not able to represent." Yet he himself thought Weston's Abel superior to his own.

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GARRICK'S CHARACTERS.

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Walpole depreciated the fine actor systematically, but at the close of a score of years' familiarity with his acting, he rendered a discriminating judgment on him. "Good and various," the player was allowed to be, but other actors had pleased Walpole more, though "not in so many parts." Quin, in Falstaff, was as excellent as Garrick in Lear. Old Johnson far more natural in everything he attempted. Mrs. Porter surpassed him in passionate tragedy. Cibber and O'Brien were what Garrick could never reach, coxcombs and men of fashion. Mrs. Clive, is, at least, as perfect in low comedy, and yet, to me, Ranger is the part that suited Garrick the best of all he ever performed. He was a poor Lothario, a ridiculous Othello, inferior to Quin in Sir John Brute, and Macbeth, and to Cibber in Bayes; and a woeful Lord Hastings and Lord Townly. Indeed, his Bayes was original, but not the true part; Cibber was the burlesque of a great poet, as the part was designed, but Garrick made it a Garretteer. The town did not like him in Hotspur, and yet I don't know if he did not exceed in it beyond all the rest. Sir Charles Williams and Lord Holland thought so too, and they were no bad judges." do not mention" he says, "the things written in his praise ;— because he writes most of them himself." This last charge was also made in a pamphlet, said to have been by Foote. It is there asserted that Garrick had a share in the property, and influence in the management, of the Public Advertiser, the Gazetteer, the Morning Post, and the St. James's Chronicle. The critical and

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monthly reviews, he found means (we are told) to keep in his interest. The Gentleman's Magazine and London Review alone withstood him. His detractors were legion. They charged him with envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness, to his comrades; and when Wilkinson asserted the youthfulness of his look and action in his last years, his anonymous detractors, while they allowed that as Ranger, he mounted the ladder nimbly, professed to see that he was old about the legs. Is he a lover? they mock his wrinkled visage, and lack-lustre eye, in which softness, they say, was never enthroned; his voice is hoarse and hollow, his dimples are furrows, his neck hideous, lips ugly, "the upper one, especially, is raised all at once like one turgid piece of leather." In such wise, was he described just before he left the stage and to embitter his retirement, he is told that his worst enemy has got famous materials for his "Life!" From first to last, did his enemies deny that he was influenced by worthy motives.

I have quoted what Walpole said of Garrick in his first year;

this is what he says of him in his last: " I saw Lear the last time Garrick played it, and as I told him, I was more shocked at the rest of the company than pleased with him,-which I believe was not just what he desired; but to give a greater brilliancy to his own setting, he had selected the very worst performers of his troop; just as Voltaire would wish there were no better poets than Thomson and Akenside." This is not true. Garrick played with Smith and Bensley; Yates, Parsons, and Palmer; Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Yates, and, for a few nights, Mrs. Siddons. Even Johnson thought there was all head and no heart in his acting. While David was once playing Lear, Johnson and Murphy were at the wing, conversing in no subdued tone. As Garrick passed by them, he observed, "You two talk so loud, you destroy my feelings." "Punch has no feelings," growled Asper, contemptuously. He, perhaps, knew Garrick could be making faces and playing tricks in the midst of his finest points.

By pen, as well as by word of mouth, did Johnson wound the self-esteem of his friend. Although Boswell asserts that Garrick never forgave the pointed satire which Johnson directed against him, under the pseudonym of Prospero, the records of the actor's life prove the contrary. That it was something he could never entirely forget, is true. Garrick had, just before, exerted himself

to render Johnson's "Irene " successful. And on the 15th February, 1752, on the morning of the night on which Garrick was to play Tancred, there appeared a paper in the Rambler, from Johnson's pen, in the two personages of which, no one could be mistaken. This attack was ungracious on one side, and undeserved on the other. But it did not move the player to ill-will. In the very next year, Garrick presented Johnson with a Malacca cane, on the gold top of which was engraved, “David Garrick to Samuel Johnson, 1753:” and on the rim, “Let him wear the laurel who deserves it." This cane was sold among the Bishop of Ely's effects in 1864. Years, later, when Johnson visited Garrick at his Hampton villa, the spirit of Asper, as he contemplated the beauty and grandeur around him, induced him to say: "These are the things, Davy, that make death terrible!" But Johnson, at last, allowed no one to abuse Davy but himself, and he then always mentioned that Garrick was the most liberal man of his day." He was honest, too. "Terms made over our cups must be as strictly observed as if agreed to over tea and toast," was his maxim. His gallantry, also, was indisputable. When Mrs. Yates invited him to her house to discuss a treaty

touching "£800 a year, and finding her own clothes," he answered, "I will be as punctual as I ought to be, to so fine a woman, and so good an actress."

One of the critical years in the life of Garrick,—of whom Ches terfield always strangely asserted, that although he was the best actor the world had ever seen, he was poor in comedy!· -was 1746, when he and Quin first appeared together, at Covent Garden, in the "Fair Penitent;" the night was that of the 14th of November. "The Fair Penitent,"" says Davies, "presented an opportunity to display their several merits, though the balance was as much in favour of Quin as the advocate of virtue is superior in argument to the defender of profligacy. . . . The shouts of applause when Horatio and Lothario met on the stage together, in the second act, were so loud and so often repeated, before the audience permitted them to speak, that the combatants seemed to be disconcerted. It was observed that Quin changed colour, and Garrick seemed to be embarassed; and it must be owned that these actors were never less masters of themselves than on the first night of the contest for pre-eminence. Quin was too proud to own his feelings on the occasion; but Mr. Garrick was heard to say, "Faith, I believe Quin was as much frightened as myself." Quin, striving to do too much, missed the mark at which he aimed. "The character of Horatio is compounded of deliberate courage, warm friendship, and cool contempt of insolence. The last, Quin had in a superior degree, but could not rise to an equal expression of the other two. The strong emphasis which he stamped on almost every word in a line, robbed the whole of that ease and graceful familiarity which should have accompanied the elocution and action of a man who is calmly chastising a vain and insolent boaster. When Lothario gave Horatio the challenge, Quin, instead of accepting it instantaneously, with the determined and unembarrassed brow of superior bravery, made a long pause, and dragged out the words, I'll meet thee there!' in such a manner as to make it appear absolutely ludicrous." He paused so long before he spoke, that somebody called out from the gallery, "Why don't you tell the gentleman whether you will meet him or no?" Cumberland tells us that "Quin presented himself, upon the rising of the curtain, in a green velvet coat embroidered down the seams, an enormous full-bottomed periwig, rolled stockings, and high-heeled, square-toed shoes. With very little variation of cadence, and in a deep full tone, accompanied by a sawing kind of action, which had more of the