justice to add, that in our own time such a change has taken place, that there is no longer room for such an unfavourable distinction[1].
His schoolfellow and friend, Dr. Taylor, told me a pleasant anecdote of Johnson's triumphing over his pupil David Garrick. When that great actor had played some little time at Goodman's Fields, Johnson and Taylor went to see him perform, and afterwards passed the evening at a tavern with him and old Giffard[2]. Johnson, who was ever depreciating stage-players, after censuring some mistakes in emphasis which Garrick had committed in the course of that night's acting, said, 'the players. Sir, have got a kind of rant, with which they run on, without any regard either to accent or emphasis[3].' Both Garrick and Giffard were offended at this sarcasm, and endeavoured to refute it; upon which Johnson rejoined, 'Well now, I'll give you something to speak, with which you
- ↑ Johnson himself recognises the change in the public estimation:—'In Dryden's time,' he writes, 'the drama was very far from that universal approbation which it has now obtained.' Works, vii. 270.
- ↑ Giffard was the manager of the theatre in Goodman's Fields, where Garrick, on Oct. 19, 1741, made his first appearance before a London audience. Murphy's Garrick, pp. 13, 16.
- ↑ 'Colonel Pennington said, Garrick sometimes failed in emphasis;
as, for instance, in Hamlet,
"I will speak daggers to her; but use none;"
instead of
"I will speak daggers to her; but use none."'
Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 28, 1773.
those who desired the character of seriousness or decency. A grave lawyer would have debased his dignity, and a young trader would have impaired his credit, by appearing in those mansions of dissolute licentiousness.' Johnson's Works, vii. 270. The following lines in Churchill's Apology (Poems, i. 65), published in 1761, shew how strong, even at that time, was the feeling against strolling players:—
Like wand'ring Arabs shift from place to place.
Vagrants by law, to Justice open laid,
They tremble, of the beadle's lash afraid,
And fawning cringe, for wretched means of life,
To Madam May'ress, or his Worship's Wife.'
