Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/403

 Johnson s Life and Genius.

��by Lord Chesterfield. After the incident of Colley Gibber, Johnson never repeated his visits. In his high and decisive tone, he has been often heard to say, ' Lord Chesterfield is a Wit among Lords, and a Lord among Wits V

In the course of the year 1747, Garrick, in conjunction with Lacy, became patentee of Drury-lane Playhouse 2. For the opening of the theatre, at the usual time, Johnson wrote for his friend the well-known prologue 3, which, to say no more of it, may at least be placed on a level with Pope's to the tragedy of Cato. The play-house being now under Garrick's direction,

��prospect of making the proposals to a woman of sense, and who knew the world, than to a gentleman whom she honoured with the appellation of Hottentot.'

Horace Walpole, writing of 'the atric genius,' says : ' In Southern it seemed a genuine ray of nature and Shakspeare, but falling on an age still more Hottentot was stifled in those gross and barbarous productions, tragi-comedies.' Quoted in Warton's Pope's Works, iv. 198.

' The young men of this day are quite Hottentots,' wrote in 1797 the author of the Life of G. M. Berkeley. Berkeley's Poems ; p. 313.

A Hottentot was a good deal lower than a Goth.

1 'This man (said he) I thought had been a Lord among wits ; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords !' Life, i. 266.

2 The partnership lasted till 1773. Davies's Life of Garrick, i. 100 ; ii. 289.

3 Life, i. 181 ; Works, i. 23.

In this Prologue Johnson, speaking of ' the wits of Charles,' says : ' Themselves they studied, as they

felt they writ,

Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit;

VOL. I.

��Yet bards like these aspir'd to lasting praise,

And proudly hoped to pimp in future

days.'

He concludes : 'Bid scenick virtue form the rising age,

And truth diffuse her radiance from

the stage.'

This contrasts oddly with an at tempt made by Garrick only two years later. Johnson says that Ot- way's Friendship in Fashion ' was, upon its revival at Drury Lane in 1749, hissed off the stage for immo rality and obscenity.' Works, vii. 174. 'The wits of Charles' is perhaps borrowed from The Spectator, No. 5, where Addison writes of ' the wits of King Charles's time.'

The Prologue, writes Hawkins (p. 198), 'failed in a great measure of its effect ; the town, it is true, sub mitted to the revival of Shakespeare's plays, recommended, as they were, by the exquisite acting of Mr. Garrick ; but in a few winters they discovered an impatience for pantomimes and ballad-farces. Mr. Garrick gave up the hope of correcting the public taste, and became so indifferent about it, that he once told me that, if the town required him to exhibit the Pilgrim's Progress in a drama, he would do it.' c c Johnson

�� �