It may be said that this was a cheap sort of generosity, but it was characteristic of kindliness of heart. He could make other and nobler sacrifices; on the last night he ever trod the stage, with a house crammed, with a profusely liberal audience, Garrick made over every guinea of the splendid receipts, not to his own account at his bankers, but to that of the Theatrical Fund. After this, his weaknesses may surely be forgotten. He may have been as restless and ignorant as Macklin has described him; as full of contrasts and as athirst for flattery as the pencil of Goldsmith has painted him; as void of literary ability as Johnson and Walpole asserted him to be; and as foolish as Foote would have us take him for; his poor opinion of Shuter and Mrs. Abington may seem to cast reproach upon his judgment; and his failure to impress Jedediah Buxton, who counted his words rather than attended to his acting, may be accepted as proof that he was a poor player (in Jedediah's eyes); but the closing act of his professional life may be cited in testimony of a noble and unselfish generosity. It was the crowning act in a career marked by many generous deeds, but marred by many crosses, vexations, and anxieties.
Colman, even before he quarrelled with Garrick, assailed him as a "grimace-maker," a "haberdasher of wry faces," a "hypocrite who laughed and cried for hire," and so forth; but Garrick, in return, wrote verses in praise of Colman's translation of Terence; and when these had softened the translator's resentment, Garrick chose the most solemn and most joyous day, Christmas, 1765, to write better verses, in which he states that failing in health, assailed by enemies, treated with ingratitude, and weary of his vocation as he is, that joyous season is made doubly joyous by the restoration of their friendship.
Garrick could yield, too, to the most exacting of his rivals. When Barry rather unjustly complained that Garrick only put him up to play on unlucky days—when operas, or concerts, or lady's drums, were a counter attraction, David kindly bade him select his own days; he himself would be content to play singly on the others. "Well, sir!" said Barry, "I certainly could not ask more than you grant!"
Vanity, it has been said, was one of Garrick's weak points; but he was not so proud of the Prince of Hesse talking with him at Ranelagh, as people were of Mr. Garrick telling them what the Prince had said. His courtesy, discretion, justice, and firmness are illustrated in a thousand ways, in his correspondence. His best actresses vexed him to the heart; but he never lost his temper or his politeness with the most vexing or capricious of them all. His counsel to young actors grasping at fame, was of the frank and useful nature which was likely to help them to seize it; and his reproof to foolish and impertinent players,—like the feather-brained Cautherley,—was delivered with a severity which must have been all the more stinging, as its application was as dignified as it was merciless. As for Garrick's professional jealousy, he seems to me to have had as little as was consonant with human nature. I know of no proprietor of a theatre, himself an actor, who collected around him such a brilliant brotherhood of actors as Garrick did; yet, when any one of these left him, or was dismissed by him, the partizans of the retiring player raised the cry of "jealousy!"
When Mallet was writing his Life of the Duke of Marlborough, he dexterously enough intimated to Roscius that he should find an opportunity of noticing in that work the great actor of the later day. The absurdity of this must have been evident to Garrick, who immediately replied, "My dear friend, have you quite left off writing for the stage?" As Mallet subsequently offered to Garrick his reconstruction of the masque of "Alfred," which he had originally written in conjunction with Thomson, and Garrick produced the piece, it has been inferred that the latter took the bait flung for him by the wily Scot. It seems to me that Garrick perceived the wile, but produced the play, notwithstanding.
There was, perhaps, weakness of character rather than frankness, in the way he would allude to his short stature,—in his obviating jokes on his marriage, by making them himself, or getting his friend, Edward Moore, to make them, not in the most refined fashion. Sensitive to criticism no doubt he was; but he was more long-suffering under censure than Quin, who pummelled poor Aaron Hill in the Court of Requests, because of adverse comments in the Prompter. Sensitive as Garrick was, he could reply to criticism merrily enough. Another Hill, the doctor and dramatist, had attacked his pronunciation, and accused him of pronouncing the i in mirth and birth as if it were an u. On which Garrick wrote:—
"If 'tis true, as you say, that I've injured a letter,
I'll change my note soon, and I hope, for the better.
May the just rights of letters as well as of men,
Hereafter be fixed by the tongue and the pen;