And Johnson, well arm'd like a hero of yore,
Has beat forty French, and will beat forty more![24]
When Drury Lane theatre was first opened under the management of Garrick, the prologue (one of the two decent prologues in the language, according to Byron) was written by Johnson. It is a fine appeal to the public to support Garrick in ennobling the stage by the revival of Shakespeare:
Ah! let not censure term our fate our choice,
The stage but echoes back the public voice;
The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give,
For we that live to please, must please to live.
The truth was, as Sir Joshua Reynolds said:
"Johnson considered Garrick to be as it were his property. He would allow no man either to blame or to praise Garrick in his presence, without contradicting him."
Boswell discovered this, as we have seen, at the famous meeting in Tom Davies's back parlour.
Garrick died in 1779 and was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. His death provoked one of the most famous of all Johnson's sentences:
"That stroke of death" he wrote, "has eclipsed the gaiety of nations."
