Boswell's reply was no less sincere:
"Be assured, my dear Sir, that my affection and reverence for you are exalted and steady. I do not believe that a more perfect attachment ever existed in the history of mankind."
David Garrick
Except for the part he played in Johnson's Irene, we have heard little of David Garrick since he came to London in 1737 "with three-halfpence in his pocket."
He at first entered Lincoln's Inn to study the law, but he had a passion for the stage and made his first appearance in the part of a harlequin. Unlike Johnson, he did not have to face a long period of poverty and 'cold obscurity'; he received a legacy of £1000 and before he had spent it all, his acting of the part of Richard III in 1741 quickly made him famous.
Mr Pope declared: "That young man never had his equal as an actor and he never will have a rival," and there were "a dozen dukes of a night" at the theatre in Goodman's Fields.
He made large sums of money and in a few years' time became manager of Drury Lane theatre, where he tried hard, but in vain, to make Johnson's tragedy a success.
In the bitterness of his early struggle Johnson was no doubt a little jealous of his old pupil.