“What! I suppose, then,” said Mr. Garrick, with an ironical cast of the eye, “you don’t choose to know that point yourself?—Eh?—O, very well, Sir, very well!” rising, and scraping round the room with sundry grotesque bows, obsequiously low and formal; “quite well, Sir! Pray make free with me! Pray keep them, if you choose it! Pray stand upon no ceremony with me, Sir!”
Dr. Burney then hunted for the list; and when he had found it, and they had looked it over, and talked it over, Mr. Garrick exclaimed, “But when, Doctor, when shall we have out the History of Histories? Do let me know in time, that I may prepare to blow the trumpet of fame.”
He then put his cane to his mouth, and, in the voice of a raree showman, squalled out, shrilly and loudly: “This is your only true History, gemmen! Please to buy! please to buy! come and buy! ’Gad, Sir, I’ll blow it in the ear of every scurvy pretender to rivalship. So, buy! gemmen, buy! The only true History! No counterfeit, but all alive!”
Dr. Burney invited him to the parlour, to breakfast; but he said he was engaged at home, to Messrs. Twiss and Boswell; whom immediately, most gaily and ludicrously, he took off to the life.
Elated by the mirth with which he enlivened his audience, he now could not refrain from imitating, in the same manner, even Dr. Johnson: but not maliciously, though very laughably. He sincerely honoured, nay, loved Dr. Johnson; but Dr. Johnson, he said, had peculiarities of such unequalled eccentricity, that even to his most attached, nay, to his most reverential admirers, they were irresistibly provoking to mimicry.
Mr. Garrick, therefore, after this apology, casting off his little, mean, snivelling Abel Drugger appearance, began displaying, and, by some inconceivable arrangement of his habiliments, most astonishingly enlarging his person, so as to make it seem many inches above its native size; not only in breadth, but, strange yet true to tell, in height, whilst exhibiting sundry extraordinary and uncouth attitudes and gestures.
Pompously, then, assuming an authoritative port and demeanour, and giving a thundering stamp with his foot on some mark on the carpet that struck his eye—not with passion or displeasure, but merely as if from absence and singularity; he took off the voice, sonorous, impressive, and oratorical, of Dr. Johnson, in a short dialogue with himself that had passed the preceding week.
“David!—will you lend me your Petrarca?”
“Y-e-s, Sir!—”
“David! you sigh?”