other man may die', without being killed by too much sensibility. GIB. But But you will allow, however, that this sensibility, those fine feelings, made him the great actor he was. JOHNS. This is all cant 2, fit only for kitchen wenches and chambermaids: Garrick's trade was to represent passion, not to feel it. Ask Reynolds whether he felt the distress of Count Hugolino when he drew it 3. GIB. But surely he feels the passion at the moment he is representing it. JOHNS. About as much as Punch feels. That Garrick himself gave into this foppery of feelings I can easily believe; but he knew at the same time that he lied. He might think it right, as far as I know, to have what fools imagined he ought to have; but it is amazing that any one should be so ignorant as to think that an actor will risk his reputation by depending on the feelings that shall be excited in the presence of two hundred people, on the repetition of certain words which he has repeated two hundred times before in what actors call their study 5. No, Sir, Garrick left nothing to chance; every gesture, every expression of countenance, and variation of voice, was settled in his ́closet before he set his foot upon the stage 6. He died of a disease of the kidneys. Murphy's Garrick, p. 472. Ante, i. 161 n., 314 n. 2 3 Northcote says that either Burke or Goldsmith, seeing a head of a man in Reynolds's picture gallery, 'exclaimed that it struck him as being the precise person, countenance and expression of the Count Ugolino as described by Dante in his Inferno! Reynolds had not had Ugolino in his thoughts when he drew the head. Northcote's Reynolds, i. 279. 4 Punch has no feelings.' Ante, i. 457. 5 Study in this sense is not in Johnson's Dictionary. 6 666 Are you, Sir, (said Johnson to Kemble) one of those enthusiasts who believe yourself transformed into the very character you represent ?” Upon Mr. Kemble's answering that he had never felt so strong a persuasion himself; "To be sure not, Sir, (said Johnson ;) the thing is impossible. And if Garrick really believed himself to be that monster, Richard the Third, he deserved to be hanged every time he performed it."' Life, iv. 243. See also ib. v. 46. Mrs. Pritchard, who was, said Johnson, 'a very good player' (Life, v. 126); 'the surprising versatility of whose talents' Gibbon mentions (Misc. Works, i. 155); 'who was celebrated in Lady Macbeth, owned that she knew no more of that play than what was written for her by the prompter prompter.' Prior's Malone, p. 354. Goethe speaking of the theatre at Weimar said :-'An actor's whole profession requires continual selfdenial, and a continual existence in a foreign mask.... If an actor appeared to me of too fiery a nature, I gave him phlegmatic characters; if too calm and tedious, I gave him fiery and hasty characters, that he might thus learn to lay aside himself, and assume foreign individuality.' Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe, i. 228-9. For Diderot's opinion, see Life, iv. 244, n. I. 66 66 66 to In the Early Diary of Frances Burney, ii. 158, we have the following instance of the two ways in which Johnson spoke of Garrick :-" "They say," cried Mrs. Thrale, "that Garrick was extremely hurt at the coldness of the King's applause, and did not find his reception such as he expected." He has been so long accustomed," said Mr. Seward, the thundering approbation of the Theatre, that a mere 'Very well, must necessarily and naturally disappoint him." Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "he should not, in a Royal apartment, expect the hallowing and clamour of the One Shilling Gallery. The King, I doubt not, gave him as much applause, as was rationally his due; and, indeed, great and uncommon as is the merit of Mr. Garrick, no man will be bold enough to assert he has not had his just proportion both of fame and profit. He has long reigned the unequalled favourite of the public; and therefore nobody will mourn his hard fate, if the King and the Royal Family were not transported into rapture, upon hearing him read Lethe. Yet Mr. Garrick will complain to his friends, and his friends will lament the King's want of feeling and taste; -and then Mr. Garrick will kindly excuse the King. He will say that His Majesty might be thinking of something else; that the affairs of America might occur to him; or some subject of more importance than Lethe; but, though he will say this himself, he will not forgive his friends if they do not contradict"! But, now that I have written this satire, it is but just both to Mr. Garrick and to Dr. Johnson, to tell you what he said of him afterwards, when he discriminated his character with equal candour and humour. "Garrick," he said, "is accused of vanity; but few men would have borne such unremitting prosperity with greater, if with equal moderation. He is accused, too, of avarice; but, were he not, he would be accused of just the contrary; for he now lives rather as a prince than an actor; but the frugality he practised, when he first appeared in the world, and which even then was perhaps beyond his necessity, has marked his character ever since; and now, though his table, his equipage, and manner of living are all the most expensive, and equal to those of a nobleman, yet the original stain still blots his name! Though, had he not fixed upon himself the charge of avarice, he would long since have been reproached with luxury, and with living beyond his station in magnificence and splendour."' RECOLLECTIONS OF DR. JOHNSON BY MISS REYNOLDS [THESE Recollections were published by Mr. Croker from some MSS. in Miss Reynolds's handwriting, communicated to him by the Rev. John Palmer, grandson of Sir Joshua Reynolds's sister Mary, who married John Palmer of Torrington. They have been kindly lent me by their present owner, Lady Colomb of Dronquinna, Kenmare, the Rev. John Palmer's granddaughter. One set is tolerably complete; the other is made up of at least two, and probably three, versions. It was clearly with a view to publication that Miss Reynolds revised and rewrote her Recollections. On one page, where she gives Johnson's poem on Levett, she says I think I may be 'I excused for publishing it, tho' it has already appear'd in print, if only because Dr. Johnson gave it to me with his own hand '.' No doubt at the last her courage failed her, as it had failed her earlier in the case of the poems and essays which she had thought of printing (post, p. 279), and her Recollections were confined to her desk. It was all in vain that Boswell had tried to get from her the letters which she had received from Johnson. 'I am sorry,' he wrote, 'that her too nice delicacy will not permit them to be published.' (Life, i. 486, n. 1).] THE first time I was in company with Dr. Johnson I remember she writes, 'No summons shock'd,' &c. In this version in the line, 'No summons mock'd by chill the Recollections of Dr. Johnson by Miss Reynolds. 251 the impression I felt in his favour, on his saying that as he return'd to his lodgings about one or two o'clock in the morning, he often saw poor children asleep on thresholds and stalls, and that he used to put pennies into their hands to buy them a breakfast. 2 And at the first interview which was at that lady's house to whom he address'd his galant [sic] letter was, as I well remember, the flattering notice he took of a lady present, on her saying that she was inclined to estimate the morality of every person according as they liked or disliked Clarissa Harlowe. He was a great admirer of Richardson's works in general, but of Clarissa he always spoke with the highest enthusiastic praise. He used to say, that it was the first Book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human Heart 3. Yet of the Author I never heard him speak with any degree of cordiality, but rather as if impress'd with some cause of resentment against him ; and this has been imputed to something of jealousy, not to say envy, on account of Richardson's having engross'd the attentions and affectionate assiduities of several very ingenious literary ladies, whom he used to call his addopted [sic] daughters, and for whom Dr. Johnson had conceived a paternal affection (particularly for two of them, Miss Carter 5 and Miss Mulso now Mrs. Chapone), previous to their acquaintance with 4 Richardson; and it was said, that he thought himself neglected by them on his account. Johnson set a higher value upon female friendship than, perhaps, most men; which may reasonably be supposed was not a little inhanced [sic] by his acquaintance with those Ladies, if it was not originally derived from them. To their society, doubtless, Richardson owed that delicacy of sentiment, that feminine excellence, as I may say, that so peculiarly distinguishes his writings from those of his own sex in general, how high soever they may soar above the other in the more dignified walks of literature, in scientific investigations, and abstruse inquiries. Dr. Johnson used to repeat, with very apparent delight, some lines of a poem written by one of these ladies 1: Say, Stella, what is Love, whose cruel power Dr. Johnson had a [sic] uncommonly retentive memory for every thing that appear'd to him worthy of observation. Whatever he met with in reading, particularly poetry, I believe he seldom required a revisal to be able to repeat verbatim3. If not literally so, it was more honour'd in the breach than in the observance. And this was the case, in some respects, in Shen |