Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/32

 steadily in value under his management, that he retired with a larger fortune than any English actor except Alleyn had made in a similar enterprise, and with the respect and friendship of all the best men of his epoch. A list, founded principally upon information supplied by Genest, of the chief incidents at Drury Lane during Garrick's management appears in Mr. Fitzgerald's ‘Life,’ ii. 472–85.

Garrick's social gifts were among his strongest points. He was a bright and vivacious talker, except in the presence of Foote, when, says Davies (ii. 257), ‘he was a muta persona.’ Concerning his conversation, Johnson says it ‘is gay and grotesque. It is a dish of all sorts, but of all good things. There is no solid meat in it; there is a want of sentiment in it. Not but that he has sentiment sometimes, and sentiment too very powerful and very pleasing, but it has not its full proportion in his conversation’ (Life by, ii. 464). Garrick's position as an actor is in the front rank. That Horace Walpole and Gray disputed his supremacy, and Colley Cibber, Quin, and Macklin made grudging concessions of his merits, is little to the point. Every innovator in art encounters such opposition. George III said that ‘he never could stand still, he was a great fidget,’ and George Selwyn spoke depreciatingly of his Othello. Smollett attacked Garrick with much bitterness, but made amends by a high compliment in his continuation of Hume's ‘History,’ vi. 310, ed. 1818. George Colman the younger [q. v.] admits Garrick's unequalled power of imitating nature, though whenever he ‘chose to show off as himself … he was almost sure to play that character worse than any other’ (Random Recollections, i. 223, 227). Colman had been told that Garrick could make ‘the twin stars which nature had stuck in his head look as dull as two coddled gooseberries,’ and proceeds to describe at some length the manner in which he conveyed the expression in the eye of a deaf person. The most trustworthy, as the most unprejudiced, testimony to Garrick's method is that of Lichtenberg, the German critic, which is included in his ‘Ausgewählte Schriften,’ and has been more than once translated into English. Writing from England in October 1775, he furnishes to a friend elaborate criticisms of Garrick in various characters. Garrick is described by him as a model of strength and force as distinguished from the actors around him, by the intense life of his look, movement, and gesture, and compelling, as if by magnetic force, the sympathy of his audience with every assumed mood. Lichtenberg assigns Garrick an incontestable superiority over every English actor, and analysing various characters, notably Hamlet and Sir John Brute, conveys a lively idea of his powers of conception and execution. Samuel Derrick [q. v.], in his ‘General View of the Stage’ (pp. 231–2), after describing his appearance, says that he is the greatest if not the only actor in Lear and Abel Drugger, Macbeth and Benedick, Hamlet and Sir John Brute, Chamont and Archer, Tancred and Ranger, Jaffier and Bayes, Lusignan and Lord Chalkstone. This selection will be generally accepted. To this description may be added that in the ‘Theatrical Review,’ 1763, p. 74, quoted by Waldron in the Appendix to his edition of the ‘Roscius Anglicanus,’ p. 21: ‘The voice of the performer is clear, impressive, and affecting, agreeable though not harmonious, sharp though not dissonant, strong though not extensive. In declamation it is uncommonly forcible, in variation unaffectedly simple. It is said to want power at the top, though the art of the actor all but conceals the defect.’ Dr. Burney says that Garrick, like other inhabitants of Lichfield, said ‘shupreme,’ ‘shuperior.’ Garrick's versatility, or, as Johnson called it, his ‘universality,’ was his distinguishing characteristic. The one character Johnson held he could not play was a fine gentleman (, v. 126). Hogarth, after seeing him in Abel Drugger, said: ‘You are in your element when you are begrimed with dirt or up to your elbows in blood’ (note to Johnson, iii. 35, taken from  Garrick, i. 31). Shireff, the miniature-painter, who was deaf and dumb, followed closely Garrick's performances, and said he understood him, ‘his face was a language’ (, Garrick, ii. 185). Cooke's ‘Memoirs of Macklin,’ p. 110, tells of a Lichfield grocer who having seen Garrick in Abel Drugger apologised to Peter Garrick for saying that though the actor might be rich, he was ‘one of the shabbiest, meanest, most pitiful hounds ever seen.’ Standing in one of her tiffs at the wings in Drury Lane, Mrs. Clive turned away in anger at finding herself moved in her own despite, and said, ‘D——him, he could act a gridiron.’ Stories of the kind from compilations French and English might be multiplied without end. The stories concerning his diminutive stature and his avarice sprang generally from rival actors. Burney and Hogarth, with Bannister and other actors of a later date, describe his facial play, the effect of the eye, which Burney says ‘was surely equal to all Argus's hundred,’ and the manner in which things inanimate seemed to share in the expression of emotion. Burney said of his coat that the very flaps and skirts seemed animated, while