GlB. Your pretensions, Dr. Johnson, nobody will dispute ; I cannot place Garrick on the same footing : your reputation will continue increasing after your death, when Garrick will be totally forgotten ; you will be for ever considered as a classic
JOHNS. Enough, Sir, enough ; the company would be better pleased to see us quarrel than bandying compliments 1 .
GlB. But you must allow, Dr. Johnson, that Garrick was too much a slave to fame, or rather to the mean ambition of living with the great, terribly afraid of making himself cheap even with them ; by which he debarred himself of much pleasant society. Employing so much attention, and so much management upon such little things, implies, I think, a little mind. It was observed by his friend Colman, that he never went into company but with a plot how to get out of it 2 ; he was every minute called out, and went off or returned as there was or was not a probability of his shining.
JOHNS. In regard to his mean ambition, as you call it, of living with the great, what was the boast of Pope 3 , and is every
1 'It was not for me to bandy escape out of it.' Prior's Malone,
civilities with my Sovereign.' Life, p. 376. Reynolds described to
ii. 35. Malone ' the plots Garrick laid for
1 Come, Sir, let's have no more of merriment,' and how one of them it. We offended one another by our so utterly failed that, having -Fox, contention ; let us not offend the Burke, Gibbon, Sheridan, Beauclerc, company by our compliments.' Ib. and Reynolds as his guests, he made iv. 336. it ' one of the most vapid days they
2 'Malone said that Garrick always had ever spent.' Ib. p. 417.
took care to leave company with a 'That "artifice" of his has left
good impression in his favour. After such an impression in the theatre,
he had told some good story, or that the phrase "as deep as Garrick"
defeated an antagonist by wit or is still current stage slang.' Leslie
raillery, he often disappointed people and Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 219.
who hoped that he would continue 3 Johnson says of Pope : ' Next
to entertain them. But he was so to the pleasure of contemplating his
artificial that he could break away possessions, seems to be that of
in the midst of the highest festivity, enumerating the men of high rank
merely in order to secure the im- with whom he was acquainted.'
pression he had made. On this part Works, viii. 313. ' His scorn of the
of his character it was well said by great is too often repeated to be real ;
Colman, that he never came into no man thinks much of that which
company without laying a plot for an he despises.' Ib. p. 316.
man's
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