1759. "for him, but Nobody knew it but him and Giffard. I know "it has been said I play'd Harlequin at Covent Garden, Et. 31. "but 'tis quite false." With which imperfect explanation Peter's ruffled dignity had to compose itself, as best it might. The anticipation of a triumph in Bayes proved thoroughly well-founded. After Bayes there was no disputing the predominance he had reached. To the roar of laughter and delight at its imitations, what still remained of the old school came tumbling down irrecoverably. 'Heresy," growled Quin;* "Reformation," cried Garrick; and the smartness of the retort showed off also his pretensions as a man of wit. Noblemen had him to their houses; Pope came out of his retirement to see him play; the great Mr. Murray, leader of the King's Bench, forgot his briefs and his politics to entertain him at supper in Lincoln's-inn-fields; ladies fell in love with him; he had to write to Lichfield to protest he was not going to be married; and if, in the last letter I shall quote from this remarkable collection, and which is dated within less than six months from the first I have quoted, he refers to some of these distinctions and compliments with a modest and manly pride, let us admit that some such set-off was needed to all the bitter mortifications his brother Peter had been heaping upon him, and that while he remains victor in the epistolary duel, he sings no 64 "Pooh! pooh!" exclaimed that old stage despot. "This Garrick is a new religion. Whitfield was followed for a time, but they'll all come to church "again." It was the "Bayes" which gave Quin mortal offence. Quin was not himself among the actors who were ridiculed, but he took to himself the laughter at others who were in fact his imitators and disciples. "Delane" says 64 Murphy I was at the head of his profession. He was tall and comely; had a "clear and strong voice, but was a mere declaimer. Garrick began with him. "He retired to the upper part of the stage, and drawing his left arm across his "breast, rested his right elbow on it, raising a finger to his nose; and then came "forward in a stately gait, nodding his head as he advanced, and in the exact "tone of Delane, spoke," &c., &c. Life, i. 53. And see Davies, Life, i. 47-8. 1759. Æt. 31. 66 66 The favor I meet strained or excessive song of triumph. 66 66 Here, then, I leave him, rapidly on his way to the other end of town, manager in expectancy already, the architect in six months of a fortune which went on increasing for thirtysix years, now as always the darling of the great, and a * The author, among other things, of A Pipe of Tobacco (the original of the Rejected Addresses, Odes and Addresses, &c. &c.), which Goldsmith praises deservedly in his Beauties of English Poetry, not on the ground that the parody is ridiculous, but that the imitation is excellent. "I am told" he remarks "that "he had no good original manner of his own, yet we see how well he succeeds "when he turns an imitator." i. 261. Johnson thought him the best "converser" he had ever met. Mrs. Piozzi, 173. "I dined to-day at Garrick's," writes Horace Walpole to Bentley (August 15, 1755): "there were the Duke of Grafton, Lord and Lady Rochford, Lady Holder 1759. taster by anticipation of the bitters as well as the sweets of the cup so plentifully filled for him. For those reproaches Et. 31. of his brother's had a sting to be remembered when his brother's outraged dignity had been long forgotten. The latter we have seen sensibly assuaged even in the letters quoted; and its conclusion and moral might be yet more pointedly drawn out of others of later date in the same collection, which show Mr. Peter Garrick solely indebted to the actor for retrieval of his shattered fortune, a successful suppliant for favours over and over again conferred on him, and finally indebted to no less a friend and patron of David's than the Duke of Devonshire for "the finger" that "lifted" himself "out of those cursed wine-vaults." But notwithstanding all this, very correctly did Peter's first shock of horror on learning that David had become a player, reflect a feeling which others used throughout his life to gall and to humiliate him; which, while it could not shut against him the favours of the great, for that reason more bitterly exposed him to the malice and insult of the little; which threw him into uneasy relations with men of his own social station; obscured too often his better nature; and remains for us the clue by which, if we would judge him favourably, we may unravel what appears least consistent in his character. I have had the less scruple in giving at some length, therefore, even to the temporary interruption of my narrative, that critical passage of his life which till now has never been authentically told. ness, the crooked Mostyn, and Dabreu the Spanish minister; two regents, of "which one is lord chamberlain, the other groom of the stole; and the wife of a 66 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; her behaviour is all sense, and all sweetness too. I don't know "how, he does not improve so fast upon me: there is a great deal of parts, and vivacity, and variety, but there is a great deal too of mimicry and burlesque." Coll. Lett. iii. 139. CHAPTER III. 1759. Et. 31. OVERTURES FROM SMOLLETT AND MR. NEWBERY. 1759-1760. BUT, at the door of Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, Doctor Smollett and Mr. Newbery have been waiting us all this while, and neither of them belonged to that leisurely class which can very well afford to wait. The Doctor was full of energy and movement always, as one of his own headlong heroes; and who remembers not the philanthropic bookseller in the Vicar of Wakefield, the good-natured man with the redpimpled face, who had no sooner alighted but he was in haste to be gone, "for he was ever on business of the utmost impor tance, and was at that time actually compiling materials "for the history of one Mr. Thomas Trip." But not on Mr. Thomas Trip's affairs had the child-loving publisher* now ventured up Break-neck Steps; and upon other than the old Critical business was the author of Peregrine Pickle a visitor in Green Arbour Court. Both had new and important schemes in hand, and with both it was an object to secure the alliance and services of Goldsmith. Smollett had "He called himself their friend," says Doctor Primrose, "but he was the "friend of all mankind. . . he had published for me against the Deuterogamists "of the age, and from him I borrowed a few pieces." And see Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, iii. 731-2. at all times not a little of the Pickle in him, and Newbery much of the Mr. Trip; but there was a genial good-heartedness in both, which makes it natural and pleasant to have to single out these two men, as the first active friends and patrons of the author of the unsuccessful Bee. Their offers were of course accepted; and it seems to imply something, however slight, of a worldly advance in connection with them, that, in the month which followed, the luckless Bee was issued in the independent form of a small half-crown volume by Mr. Wilkie, and Kenrick received instructions from Mr. Ralph Griffiths to treat it in the Monthly Review "with the greatest candour toward an unsuccessful Author." The 1st of January, 1760, saw the first venture launched. It was published for sixpence, "embellished with curious copperplates," and entitled "The British Magazine, or "Monthly Repository for Gentlemen and Ladies. By "T. Smollett, M.D., and others." It was dedicated with much fervour to Mr. Pitt; and Mr. Pitt's interest (greatly to the spleen of Horace Walpole, who thinks the matter worthy of mention in his Memoirs of George the Second) enabled Smollett to put it forth with a royal license, granted in consideration of the fact that Doctor Smollett had "represented "to his Majesty that he has been at great labour and expense in writing original pieces himself, and engaging 66 Monthly Review, xxii. 42, January 1760. A specimen of the candour is worth quoting. "We do not mean (after saying that experience had, no doubt, proved the justice of the author's anticipations of failure, as well as of his belief that nobody but himself would regret it) "to insinuate that his lucubrations are so void "of merit as not to deserve the public attention. On the contrary, we must confess ourselves to have found no inconsiderable entertainment in their perusal. "His stile is not the worst, and his manner is agreeable enough, in our opinion, however it may have failed of exciting universal admiration. The truth is, most "of his subjects are already sufficiently worn-out, and his observations frequently "trite and common." iii. 259, 261. It follows an allusion to the abusive portrait of Lord Lyttelton in Roderick Random, "a novel of which sort he published two or three." 1759. Et. 31. |