For a short time she joined her brother at the Haymarket, but soon afterward the theatre was shut by an order of the Lord Chamberlain. Back to strolling and puppetshows. In 1755 she published an autobiography, a very extraordinary book, and upon the proceeds opened another public-house, at Islington this time. In a few months she was again reduced to beggary. Her unhappy life came to an end in 1760.

CHAPTER III.

THE MODERN ROSCIUS.

Early Life of David Garrick.-He leaps into Fame at a Bound.-His Long Career of Superb and Uninterrupted Triumph.-His Great Impersonations and Judgments of Contemporaries on his Acting.-Private Character and Brilliant Farewell to the Stage.-Testimony of Fox, Burke, and Townshend.

THE Garrigues, the original form of the name, were of French extraction. The grandfather of the great actor was a refugee driven over to England by the revocation of the edict of Nantes. A son of his, an officer in the English army, married the daughter of a Lichfield parson, of Irish extraction, and one offspring of this marriage was David Garrick, born at Hereford, where his father, Captain Garrick, was then quartered, on February 19, 1716. The blood of three nationalities-French, Irish, English-was about equally mixed in his veins. He was educated at the Lichfield Grammar School, which he entered just as another future celebrity, a companion of his, Samuel Johnson, some seven years his senior, was leaving it.

By the time he was eleven years of age David had begun to feel the prickings of his inborn vocation, and had organized a company of juvenile players for the performance of Farquhar's "Recruiting Officer," in which he himself acted Kite, and one of his sisters the Chambermaid. A stop, however, was about this time put to such diversions by a summons from his uncle David, a wine merchant settled in Portugal, who proposed to take him into the business, and at eleven years old little David made the voyage to Lisbon, alone. But it is to be supposed that the business did not suit him, as in less than a twelvemonth we find him back in England entertaining his good Lichfield friends with more amateur performances.

The bright-eyed, clever, vivacious boy was a welcome guest at all the best houses, and more particularly at the officers' mess, in the little remote cathedral garrison town. More than one colonel offered him a cornetcy, which it is strange he did not accept-unless his secret mind was already bent upon the sock and buskin. When his father returned after a four years' absence, it was thought time to decide on a profession for him. Upon some deliberation the bar was chosen, and it was determined he should at once proceed to London, and enter himself at one of the Inns of Court.

Garrick's acquaintance with Samuel Johnson, afterward to be one of the great lights of English letters, commenced in 1736 at Edial, near Lichfield, in the relation of pupil and pedagogue. It ended with the two going to London together to seek their fortunes, Johnson with a tragedy in his pocket. Afterward when David became manager of Drury Lane, he produced this play out of friendship. But not even such actors as Garrick, Barry, Mrs. Cibber, and Mrs. Pritchard, could redeem

its dullness. Hence arose the great doctor's spleen against actors, and pique against his friend Davy in particular. During this period, while Johnson was pursuing his weary round as a bookseller's hack, Garrick was industriously cutting his law studies and devoting as much time as possible to his darling playhouses, after each of which visits his prospective profession became more unendurable. Little thought the actors that there sat in one corner of the pit an obscure young country fellow who was noting their shortcomings, and thinking how differently he would act, and who was destined to sweep away all the mouthing, strutting, sing-song traditions of their effete school and bring about a marvelous revolution in their art. There is no doubt that even at this period his whole soul was absorbed by such thoughts, and only consideration for the prejudices of his family withheld him from thrusting himself upon the stage.

He had left Lichfield but a few weeks when the sad news of his father's death was brought to him. And soon afterward his uncle, the Lisbon wine merchant, who had come over to England, also died, bequeathing him one thousand pounds. His brother Peter, who had begun life as a midshipman, sank the little money the captain had left him in a wine business, and proposed that David should join him. Anything was better to his taste than the law, so he threw away his books and exchanged the bar for the cellar. The business was to be carried on both in Lichfield and London; Peter was to conduct the country branch, David the town. The cellars were in Durham Yard, upon the site of which the Adelphi Terrace was afterward raised. "He lived with three quarts of vinegar in a cellar, and called himself a wine merchant," said spiteful Foote.

But Davy could no more give his mind to wine than he could to the law. The London of 1738 was very different to the dull, nondescript Temple of Mammon it has become to-day. Between St. Paul's Cathedral and St. Martin's Church there lay a region where business, that leaden-headed fetich of this enlightened age, was not supremely worshiped; and where brains, astounding as the assertion may sound to the rising generation, were esteemed more than gold; it was the region of wits, authors, actors, books, theatres, coffee-houses, and taverns-a delightful region, quite Parisian in its gayety. All the wit and genius of England were to be found in the coffee-houses and taverns of Fleet Street and Covent Garden, forming a society as brilliant and more diverse than that of the French salons. But it was oligarchical; the vulgar mob, kept within its proper bounds, had not yet overflowed into and profaned every place of public resort so as to drive the refined into the exclusiveness of dull clubs or home life. The country gentleman who spent an evening at the Bedford or the Mitre had a memory of delight for the remainder of his life, and his less fortunate friends never wearied of listening to the descriptions of the celebrities he had seen there and the witty things he had heard from their lips. Such was the society into which David Garrick eagerly pushed his way and was well received; he was full of fire and spirit, he was not destitute of wit, and could already give excellent imitations of the marked peculiarities of the actors of the day. He made the acquaintance of a young player named McLaughlin, afterward so well known as Charles Macklin, who, like himself, was burning to reform the then style of acting. They became inseparable companions, and were to be seen at all times

of the day walking up and down beneath the Covent Garden Piazzas, discussing their theories; or at the Bedford at night, after the play, in company with another young fellow, one Samuel Foote, who was floating about among wits and players, spending his fortune as fast as he could, to be by-and-by enrolled a chief among both.

Through one of his theatrical friends, Giffard, the manager of an unlicensed theatre in Goodman's Fields, the young aspirant got chances to play some little parts, and shortly afterward again he appeared at Ipswich as Aboan in Southern's "Oroonoko; 19 as Chamont in Otway's "Orphan; " and Sir Harry Wildair in Farquhar's "Constant Couple."

All this time poor Peter was living with his three quarts of vinegar at Lichfield, in happy ignorance of his partner's doings, though a little troubled over the increasing difficulties of the firm. But the blow was coming fast. Upon his return to London, David seems to have applied for an engagement at both the patent houses. Finding no chance there, he was obliged to choose a humbler scene for his appearance in the metropolis, the unlicensed theatre in Goodman's Fields, where he made his début on October 19, 1741.

The débutant had many of his tavern and coffeehouse friends in front, among others Macklin and "Gentleman" Smith. From his first soliloquy the audience could perceive that a new light had burst upon the stage; there was no drawl, no sing-song, no mouthing; all was new, natural, full of fire and passion; some of the points literally electrified them, as when he dashed away the prayer-book after his interview with the lord-mayor; his "Off with his head, so much for Buckingham;" his marvelous tent-scene, his wild cha