JOHNSONIAN DIALOGUES.

JOHNSON AND GARRICK.

THE following jeu d'esprit is said to have been written by sir Joshua Reynolds, to illustrate a remark which he had made" that Dr. Johnson considered Garrick as his property, and would never suffer any one to praise or abuse him but himself." In the first of these supposed dialogues, sir Joshua himself, by high encomiums upon Garrick, is represented as drawing down upon him Johnson's censure: in the second, Mr. Gibbon, by taking the opposite side, calls forth his praise.

Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Reynolds. Let me alone, I'll bring him out (aside.) I have been thinking, Dr. Johnson, this morning, on a matter that has puzzled me very much; it is a subject that I dare say has often passed in your thoughts, and, though I cannot, I dare say you have made up your mind upon it.-Johnson. Tilly fally, what is all this preparation-what is all this mighty matter?-R. Why, it is a very weighty matter. The subject I have been thinking upon is-Predestination and Free-will, two things I cannot reconcile together for the life of me: in my opinion, Dr. Johnson, free-will and fore-knowledge cannot be reconciled.-J. Sir, it is not of very great importance what your opinion is upon such a question.R. But I meant only, Dr. J. to know your opinion.-J. No, sir; you meant no such thing: you meant only to show these gentlemen that you are not the man they took you to be, but that you think of high matters sometimes, and that you may have the credit of having it said, that you held an argument with Sam Johnson on predestination and free-will;-a subject of that magnitude as to have engaged the attention of the world-to have perplexed the wisdom of man for these two thousand

years; a subject on which the fallen angels, who had yet not lost all their original brightness, find themselves in wandering mazes lost. That such a subject could be discussed in the levity of convivial conversation is a degree of absurdity beyond what is easily conceivable.-R. It is so as you say, to be sure; I talked once to our friend Garrick upon this subject, but I remember we could make nothing of it.-J. O noble pair!-R. Garrick was a clever fellow, Dr. J. Garrick, take him altogether, was certainly a very great man.-J. Garrick, sir, may be a great man in your opinion, as far as I know, but he was not so in mine; little things are great to little men.R. I have heard you say, Dr. Johnson-J. Sir, you never heard me say that David Garrick was a great man; you may have heard me say that Garrick was a good repeater of other men's words;-words put into his mouth by other men; this inakes but a faint approach towards being a great man.-R. But take Garrick upon the whole now, in regard to conversation.-J. Well, sir, in regard to conversation, I never discovered in the conversation of David Garrick any intellectual energy, any wide grasp of thought, any extensive comprehension of mind, or that he possessed any of those powers to which great could with any degree of propriety be applied.-R. But still-J. Hold, sir; I have not done. There are, to be sure, in the laxity of colloquial speech, various kinds of greatness: a man may be a great tobacconist, a man may be a great painter, he may be likewise a great mimic; now you may be the one, and Garrick the other, and yet neither of you be great men.-R. But Dr. Johnson-J. Hold, sir; I have often lamented how dangerous it is to investigate and to discriminate character, to men who have no discriminative powers.-R. But Garrick, as a companion, I heard you say no longer ago than last Wednesday at Mr. Thrale's table- J. You tease me, sir. Whatever you may have heard me say, no longer ago than last Wednesday, at Mr. Thrale's table, I tell you I do. not say so now; besides, as I said before, you may not have understood me, you misapprehended me-you may

not have heard me.-. -R. I am very sure I heard you J. Besides, besides, sir, besides-do you not knoware you so ignorant as not to know, that it is the highest degree of rudeness to quote a man against himself.-R. But if you differ from yourself, and give one opinion to-day-J. Have done, sir; the company you see are tired, as well as myself.

T'other side.

Dr. Johnson and Mr. Gibbon.

Johnson. No, sir; Garrick's fame was prodigious, not only in England, but all over Europe; even in Russia, I have been told, he was a proverb; when any one had repeated well he was called a second Garrick.-Gibbon. I think he had full as much reputation as he deserved.-J. I do not pretend to know, sir, what your meaning may be, by saying he had as much reputation as he deserved; he deserved much, and he had much.-G. Why, surely, Dr. Johnson, his merit was in small things only; he had none of those qualities that make a real great man.-J. Sir, I as little understand what your meaning may be, when you speak of the qualities that make a great man; it is a vague term. Garrick was no common man: a man above the common size may surely, without any great impropriety, be called a great man. In my opinion, he has very reasonably fulfilled the prophecy which he once reminded me of having made to his mother, when she asked me how little David went on at school, that I should say to her, that he would come to be hanged, or come to be a great man. No, sir; it is undoubtedly true, that the same qualities, united with virtue or vice, make a hero or a rogue, a great general or a highwayman. Now Garrick, we are sure, was never hanged; and in regard to his being a great man, you must take the whole man together. It must be considered in how many things Garrick excelled in which every man desires to excel. Setting aside his excellence as an actor, in which he is acknowledged to be unrivalled; as a man, as a poet, as a convivial companion, you will find but

few his equals, and none his superior. As a man, he was kind, friendly, benevolent, and generous.-G. Of Garrick's generosity I never heard; I understood his character to be totally the reverse, and that he was reckoned to have loved money.-J. That he loved money nobody will dispute ;-who does not? but if you mean, by loving money, that he was parsimonious to a fault, sir, you have been misinformed. To Foote, and such scoundrels, who circulated those reports-to such profligate spendthrifts prudence is meanness and economy is avarice. That Garrick, in early youth, was brought up in strict habits of economy I believe, and that they were necessary I have heard from himself; to suppose that Garrick might inadvertently act from this habit, and be saving in small things, can be no wonder; but let it be remembered at the same time, that, if he was frugal by habit, he was liberal from principle; that when he acted from reflection he did what his fortune enabled him to do, and what was expected from such a fortune. I remember no instance of David's parsimony, but once, when he stopped Mrs. Woffington from replenishing the tea-pot; it was already, he said, as red as blood; and this instance is doubtful, and happened many years ago. In the latter part of his life I observed no blamable parsimony in David: his table was elegant, and even splendid; his house, both in town and country, his equipage, and, I think, all his habits of life were such as might be expected from a man who had acquired great riches. In regard to his generosity, which you seem to question, I shall only say, there is no man to whom I would apply with more confidence of success, for the loan of two hundred pounds to assist a common friend, than to David, and this, too, with very little if any probability of its being repaid.-G. You were going to say something of him as a writer: you don't rate him very high as a poet.-J. Sir, a man may be a respectable poet without being a Homer, as a man may be a good player without being a Garrick. In the lighter kinds of poetry, in the appendages of the drama, he was, if not the first, in the very first class. He had a readiness

and facility, a dexterity of mind, that appeared extraordinary even to men of experience, and who are not apt to wonder from ignorance. Writing prologues, epilogues, and epigrams, he said he considered as his trade; and he was what a man should be, always, at all times, ready at his trade. He required two hours for a prologue or epilogue, and five minutes for an epigram. Once, at Burke's table, the company proposed a subject, and Garrick finished his epigram within the time. The same experiment was repeated in the garden, and with the same success.-G. Garrick had some flippancy of parts, to be sure, and was brisk and lively in company; and, by help of mimickry and story-telling, made himself a pleasant companion: but here the whole world gave the superiority to Foote; and Garrick himself appears to have felt as if his genius was rebuked by the superior powers of Foote. It has been often observed, that Garrick never dared to enter into competition with him, but was content to act an under-part, to bring Foote out.-J. That this conduct of Garrick's might be interpreted by the gross minds of Foote and his friends, as if he was afraid to encounter him, I can easily imagine. Of the natural superiority of Garrick over Foote this conduct is an instance. He disdained entering into competition with such a fellow, and made him the buffoon of the company, or, as you say, brought him out; and what was at last brought out but coarse jests and vulgar merriment indecency and impiety-a relation of events which, upon the face of them, could never have happened-characters grossly conceived, and as coarsely represented? Foote was even no mimic: he went out of himself, it is true; but without going into another man. He is excelled by Garrick even in this, which is considered as Foote's greatest excellence. Garrick, besides his exact imitation of the voice and gesture of his original, to a degree of refinement of which Foote had no conception, exhibited the mind and mode of thinking of the person imitated. Besides, Garrick confined his powers within the limits of decency. He had a character to preserve:-Foote had none. By Foote's buf