This last charge was also made in a pamphlet, said to have been by Foote. It is there asserted that Garrick had considerable share in the property, and great influence in the management, of the Public Advertiser, the Gazetteer, the Morning Post, and the St. James's Chronicle. The critical and monthly reviews, he found means (we are told) to keep in his interest. The Gentleman's Magazine and London Review alone withstood him. Quin and Mossop, living,—he is said to have hated; dead,—to have offered to bury their remains with unusual honours. The Barrys, King, Lee, Mrs. Abington, and others, he is said to have mimicked in private; by similar mimicry in public, he is accused of having broken Delane's heart, and he is also charged with having ruined Powell, by binding him to beggarly-paid service, under a bond of £1000, and by exacting the heavy penalty when the terms were infringed. He is charged with damning his brethren with faint praise, and ridiculing the monotony of Mrs. Cibber's action; he who said that tragedy had died with her! It was laid as a meanness on him that he would not engage great actors,—at a time both the Barrys were in his company, drawing houses as great as could be drawn by his own powers. Wilkinson has asserted the youthfulness of his look and action to the last, but his anonymous detractors, while they allowed that, as Ranger, he mounted the ladder nimbly, professed to see that he was old about the legs. Is he a lover? they mock his wrinkled visage and lack-lustre eye, in which softness, they say, was never enthroned; his voice is hoarse and hollow, his dimples are furrows, his neck hideous, lips ugly, "the upper one, especially, is raised all at once like one turgid piece of leather." In such wise, was he described just before he left the stage; and to embitter his retirement, he is told that his worst enemy has got famous materials for his "Life!"
Garrick was proud of his Abel Drugger, but he was ready to acknowledge the superiority of Weston in that part, whose acting was described by Garrick as the finest he ever saw.[105] To this pleasant piece of criticism was added a £20 note, on Weston's benefit night.
And yet, from first to last, did his enemies deny that Garrick was influenced by worthy motives. Walpole describes him, unjustly, as jealous (even after his retirement) of rising young players; and Horace writes, in 1777, "Garrick is dying of yellow jaundice, on the success of Henderson, a young actor from Bath. Enfin donc désormais, there must never be a good player again! As Voltaire and Garrick are the god and goddess of envy, the latter would put a stop to procreation, as the former would annihilate the traces of all antiquity, if there were no other gods but they."
I have quoted what Walpole said of the actor in his first year;—this is what he says of him in his last: "I saw Lear the last time Garrick played it, and as I told him, I was more shocked at the rest of the company than pleased with him,—which I believe was not just what he desired; but to give a greater brilliancy to his own setting, he had selected the very worst performers of his troop; just as Voltaire would wish there were no better poets than Thomson and Akenside." This is not true. Garrick played with Gentleman Smith and Bensley; Yates, Parsons, and Palmer; Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Yates, and, for a few nights, Mrs. Siddons.
Because Garrick never allowed his judgment to be overpowered by his emotions, intense as they were, Johnson thought there was all head and no heart in his acting. While David was once playing Lear, Johnson and Murphy were at the wing, conversing in no subdued tone. As Garrick passed by them, he observed, "You two talk so loud, you destroy my feelings." "Punch has no feelings," growled Asper, contemptuously.
By pen, as well as by word of mouth, did Johnson wound the self-esteem of his friend. Although Boswell asserts that Garrick never forgave the pointed satire which Johnson directed against him, under the pseudonym of Prospero, the records of the actor's life prove the contrary. That it was something he could never entirely forget is true, for the assault was made under circumstances by which its bitterness was much aggravated. Garrick had, just before, manfully exerted himself to render Johnson's "Irene" successful. And on the 15th February 1752, on the morning of the night on which Garrick was to play Tancred, there appeared a paper in the Rambler, from Johnson's pen, in the two personages of which, no one could be mistaken. They are described as coming up to town together to seek a fortune, which had been found by one of them, Prospero, who was "too little polished by thought and conversation to enjoy it with elegance and decency!"
Asper then describes a visit he reluctantly pays to Prospero's house. He is tardily admitted, finds the stairs matted, the best rooms open, that he may catch a glance at their grandeur, while his friend conducts him into a back room, suited for inferior company—where Asper is received with all the insolence of condescension. The chairs and carpets are covered, but the corners are turned up that Asper may admire their beauty and texture. He did "not gratify Prospero's folly with any outcries of admiration, but coldly bade the footman let down the cloth."
The host gives the guest inferior tea, talks of his jeweller and silversmith, boasts of his intimacy with Lord Lofty, alludes to his chariot, and ladies he takes in it to the Park, and exhibits his famous Dresden china, which he "always associates with his chased tea-kettle." "When I had examined them a little," says Asper, "Prospero desired me to set them down, for they who were accustomed only to common dishes seldom handled china with much care." Asper takes credit for much philosophy in not dashing Prospero's "baubles to the ground;" and when the latter begins to affect a preference for the less distinguished position of one with whom he was "once upon the level," Asper quits the house in disgust.
This attack was ungracious and cowardly, on one side, as it was undeserved on the other. I can fancy it disturbed Garrick's performance of Tancred on that night; the Rambler was universally read, and the application could not fail. But it disturbed nothing else. Years later, when Johnson visited Garrick at his Hampton villa, the spirit of Asper was softened in his breast, and he was justified in the well-known remark he made, as he contemplated the beauty and grandeur around him:—"These are the things, Davy, that make death terrible!" It must not be forgotten, however, that Johnson, at last, allowed no one to abuse Davy but himself, and he then always mentioned that "Garrick was the most liberal man of his day."
So great, indeed, was his honesty, too, that Garrick, having entered thoughtlessly into some bargain, carried it out with the remark, that "terms made over our cups must be as strictly observed as if I had agreed to them over tea and toast." His gallantry, also, was indisputable. When Mrs. Yates invited him to her house to discuss a treaty touching "£800 a year, and finding her own clothes," he answered, "I will be as punctual as I ought to be to so fine a woman, and so good an actress."