to-day at Garrick's," says his lordship. "There were the Duke of Grafton, Lady Rochfort, Lady Holderness, the crooked Moyston, and Dabren, the Spanish minister; two regents, of which one is Lord Chamberlain and the other Groom of the Stole; and the wife of a Secretary of State. This is being sur un assez bon ton for a player! Don't you want to ask me how I like him? Do want, and I will tell you. I like her exceedingly; she is all sense, and all sweetness too. I don't know how, but he does not improve so fast upon me. There is a great deal of parts, vivacity, and variety, but there is a great deal, too, of mimicry and burlesque. I am very ungrateful, for he flatters me abundantly, but, unluckily, I know it. I was accustomed to it enough when my father was First Minister; on his fall I lost it all at once." Garrick," says another elegant writer, "was all submission in the presence of a peer or a poet, equally loath to offend the dignity of the one or provoke the irritability of the other; hence he was at all times too methodical in his conversation to admit of his mixing in the feast of reason and the flow of soul. To his dependants and inferior players, however, he was indeed King David, except when he had a mind to mortify them by means of one another. On such occasions he generally took some of the lowest among them, whom he not only cast in the same scenes with himself, but frequently walked arm-and-arm with them in the greenroom, and sometimes in his morning ramble about the streets." By all his imitators his ordinary deportment and speech in private life have been described as very singular. We have heard him mimicked by Henderson, whose imitation was said to be frightfully perfect; by Brush Collins; by Tate Wilkinson; by a celebrated public mimic in London whose name we now forget. Their imitations all partook, no doubt, of the exaggeration inseparable from mimicry, but they all so exactly resembled each other that it was impossible to resist the persuasion that they were all good caricature pictures of the same person. Henderson's was comparatively chaste, and was said by some of Garrick's intimates to be very little overcharged. Taking this for granted, I conceive Wilkinson's account of Garrick's conversation to come as near to the thing as it was possible for writing to bring it. Of this a single specimen will answer as well as a thousand. It seems that, owing to the departure of Mossop, Garrick was at a loss for a Bajazet, and, perhaps to mortify Mossop, he selected Wilkinson to perform that great character. A private rehearsal of the part was ordered in Mr. Garrick's dressing-room and in his presence, for the benefit of his corrections. Mr. Cross, the prompter, was ordered to attend with the play, and also Mr. Holland, who was to perform Tamerlane. Mr. Garrick was in high humor, and Wilkinson, who says so, details the conversation thus: "Well, now, Cross, hey! Why, now, this will be too much for my exotic! Hey, Cross? I must do it myself; what say you? Hey, now, Cross?'-Cross replied, 'I am afraid not this year, sir, as the time is drawing near, and Bajazet is long, and the play must be done next Monday.' 'Well, now, hey, Cross! Why, that is true, but don't you think my brow and eye in Bajazet? How do you think I should play it?'-'Oh, sir,' said Cross, like everything else you do, your Bajazet would be incomparable.' To which we all bowed and assented. He then acted a speech or two in the first scene, and his look was truly inimitable." From the life of Mr. Garrick some most useful lessons of prudential and moral conduct may be deduced. One of these -and perhaps the most valuable, because it concerns our duty toward our neighbor-is to be cautious how we form opinions upon the characters of our fellow-creatures on the illusory grounds of public report; for it is not more impossible for a thing to be at once black and white, light and dark, good and bad, than for David Garrick to be such as he has been described. It may serve to check any overweening fondness for public opinion, inspired by pride and vanity, to see how inefficacious to the obtaining of unsullied reputation, or even fair play, are the most strenuous efforts of the finest talents. Το us it seems impossible to find two men more different than the Garrick of his admirers and the Garrick of his adversaries. As specimens of the pro and con. on this subject the reader will peruse, no doubt with surprise, the following characters. The following is taken from the European Magazine: "He was too cunning and too selfish to be loved or respected, and so immoderately fond of money and praise that he expected you should cram him with flattery. He was a kind of spoiled child whom you must humor in all his ways and follies. He was often in extremes of civility and sly impertinence, provoking and timid by turns. If he handed you a teacup or a glass, you must take it as a great condescension; and he often called to you in the street to tell you in a loud voice and at some distance that he intended you the honor of a visit. This some wag termed 'a visit in perspective.' He was sore and waspish to a degree of folly, and had creatures about him who were stationed spies, and gave him intelligence of every idle word that was said of him; at the same time they misrepresented or exaggerated what passed, in order to gratify him. He was very entertaining, and could tell a story with great humor; but he was generally posting to his interest, and so taken up with his own concerns that he seldom was a pleasant companion. He was stiff and strained, and more an actor in company than on the stage, as Goldsmith has described him. In short, he was an unhappy man with all his success and fame, and wore himself out in fretting and solicitude about his worldly affairs and in theatrical squabbles and altercations. Though he loved money, he has been friendly on some occasions, and liberal to persons in distress; but he had the knack of making his acquaintance useful and subservient to him, and always had his interest in view. His levees put you in mind of a court, where you might see mean adulation, insincerity, pride, and vanity, and the little man in ecstasy at hearing himself applauded by a set of toad-eaters and hungry poets." "As an author he was not without merit, having written some smart epigrams, prologues, epilogues, and farces; and, to do him justice, he was not very vain of his writings. "To conclude of him as an actor, 'Take him for all in all, I ne'er shall see his like again.' "As a man he had failings, for which we must make allowance when we consider that he was intoxicated, and even corrupted, by the great incense and court paid to him by his admirers." INDEX. A. "ABANDON," a theatrical term, 178. Aristotle and Shakespeare, 170. Asylum for actors, Forrest's, 328. B. tricks of personal habit, 32; mel- BAKER, Mrs. Alexina Fisher, 402. mannerisms of self, 38; contrast- Barbara S- anecdote by Chas. of imitation, 43; stage-traditions Barry, Thomas, 401. of, 44; the stage-voice, 45; old- Bates, John, bargains with Forrest, 66 'teapot 329. 197. Betty, Master, in London, 338; Rey- nolds's opinion of, 341; furore for, style" of, 49; a hundred years Beggar's Opera, Miss DeCamp in, Adams, Augustus, imitation of For- imitator, 176; elocutionary skill Adams's, John Quincy, anecdote of Brown, Frederick F., 290; Mrs. F. R. M. Johnson, 270. ing of, 277. F. Brown, 203. Ancient Mariner, elder Booth's read- Buckstone the comedian, 78; at André, Major, acting at South Street |