The pause that ensued was embarrassing, and not quite free from alarm; when the intruder, after an extraordinary nod or two, of a palpably threatening nature, suddenly started up, threw off his slouched hat and old rocolo, flung his red silk handkerchief into the ashes, and displayed to view, lustrous with vivacity, the gay features, the sparkling eyes, and laughing countenance of Garrick,—the inimitable imitator, David Garrick.
Dr. Burney, delighted at this development, clapped his hands, as if the scene had been represented at a theatre: and all his family present joined rapturously in the plaudit: while Mr. Twining, with the happy surprise of a sudden exchange from expected disgust to accorded pleasure, eagerly approached the arm-chair, for a presentation which he had longed for nearly throughout his life.
Mr. Garrick then, with many hearty reciprocations of laughter, expounded the motive to the feat which he had enacted.
He had awaked, he said, that morning, under the formidable impression of an introduction to a profound Greek scholar, that was almost awful; and that had set him to pondering upon the egregious loss of time and pleasurability that hung upon all formalities in making new acquaintances; and he then set his wits to work at devising means for skipping at once, by some sleight of hand, into abrupt cordiality. And none occurred that seemed so promising of spontaneous success, as presenting himself under the aspect of a person whom he knew to be so desperately unpleasant to the scholiast, that, at the very sound of his name, he would inwardly ejaculate,
“Take any form but that!”
Here, in a moment, Mr. Garrick was in the centre of the apartment, in the attitude of Hamlet at sight of the ghost.
This burlesque frolic over, which gave a playful vent that seemed almost necessary to the superabundant animal spirits of Mr. Garrick, who, as Dr. Johnson has said of Shakespeare, “was always struggling for an occasion to be comic,” he cast away farce and mimicry; and became, for the rest of the visit, a judicious, intelligent, and well informed, though ever lively and entertaining converser and man of letters: and Mr. Twining had not been more amused by his buffoonery, than he grew charmed by his rationality.
In the course of the conversation, the intended Encyclopedia of Dr. Goldsmith being mentioned, and the Doctor’s death warmly regretted, a description of the character as well as works of that charming author was brought forward; and Mr. Garrick named, what no one else in his presence could have hinted at, the poem of Retaliation.
Mr. Garrick had too much knowledge of mankind to treat with lightness so forcible an attack upon the stability of his friendships, however it might be softened off by the praise of his talents.[62] But he had brought it, he said, upon himself, by an unlucky lampoon, to which he had irresistibly been led by the absurd blunders, and the inconceivable inferiority between the discourse and the pen of this singular man; who, one evening at the club, had been so outrageously laughable, that Mr. Garrick had been betrayed into asserting, that no man could possibly draw the character of Oliver Goldsmith, till poor Oliver was under ground; for what any one would say after an hour’s reading him, would indubitably be reversed, after an hour’s chat. “And then,” Mr. Garrick continued, “one risible folly bringing on another, I voted him to be dead at that time, that I might give his real character in his epitaph. And this,” he added, “produced this distich.”
“Attend, passer by, for here lies old Noll;