GARRICK, David, the greatest actor of his age and country, was born at the Angel Inn at Hereford, in the beginning of 1716. His father, Captain Peter Garrick, was a French refugee, and had a troop of horse, which were then quartered in that city. This rank he maintained in the army for several years, and had attained a majority at the time of his death, which, however, prevented him from ever enjoying it. Mr Garrick received the rudiments of his education in the free school at Litchfield, which he afterwards completed at Rochester, under the celebrated Mr Colson, afterwards mathematical professor at Cambridge. Dr Johnson and he were fellow-students at the same school; and it is a curious fact, that these two celebrated persons came up to London in the same coach, with the intention of pushing themselves into active life. On the 9th of March 1736, he was entered at the honourable society of Lincoln’s Inn. The study of the law, however, he soon quitted, and followed for some time the employment of a wine-merchant; but that too having disgusted him, he at last gave way to the irresistible bias of his mind, and joined a travelling company of comedians at Ipswich in Suffolk, under the assumed name of Lyddal. Having in this poor school of Apollo gained some acquaint ance with the histrionic art, he burst at once upon the world in the year 1741, in all the splendour of perfection, at the little theatre in Goodman’s Fields, then under the direction of Henry Giffard.

The character which he first performed was that of Richard III., in which, like the sun bursting from behind a cloud, he displayed in the earliest dawn even more than noontide brightness. His excellence dazzled and astonished every one; and certainly, perceiving a young man, in his twenty-fourth year, and in reality a novice to the stage, reaching at one single step to that height of perfection which maturity of years and long practical experience had not been able to bestow on the most distinguished performers of the English stage, was a phenomenon which could not but become the object of universal speculation, and of as universal admiration. The theatres at the west end of the town were deserted; Goodman’s Fields, from being the rendezvous of citizens and citizens’ wives alone, became the resort of all ranks of men; and Garrick continued to act till the close of the season.

Having very advantageous terms offered him for performing in Dublin during part of the summer, he went over to that city, where he found the same just homage paid to his merit which he had received from his own countrymen. To the service of the latter, however, he esteemed himself more immediately bound; and therefore, in the ensuing winter, he engaged himself to Mr Fleetwood, then manager of Drury Lane. In this theatre be continued till the year 1745, when he again went over to Ireland, and continued there the whole season, as jointmanager with Mr Sheridan, in the direction and profits of the theatre-royal in Smock Alley. From Dubiin he returned to England, and was engaged for the season of 1746 with Mr Rich at Covent Garden. This was his last performance as a hired actor; for in the close of that season Mr Fleetwood’s patent for the management of Drury Lane being expired, and that gentleman having no inclination further to pursue a design by which, from his want of acquaintance with the proper conduct of it, or some other cause, he had considerably impaired his fortune, Mr Garrick, in conjunction with Mr Lacy, purchased the property of that theatre, together with the renovation of the patent, and in the winter of 1747 opened it with the greater part of Mr Fleetwood’s company, and with the additional strength of Mr Barry, Mrs Pritchard, and Mrs Cibber, from Covent Garden.

Were we to trace Mr Garrick through the several occurrences of a life so active, busy, and full of events as his, we should swell this account beyond all due compass. Suffice it to say, that he continued in the unmolested enjoyment of his fame and unrivalled excellence to the moment of his retirement. His universality of excellence was never once attacked by competition. Tragedy, comedy, farce; the lover and the hero; the jealous husband who suspects his wife without cause, and the thoughtless lively rake who attacks her without design; were all alike his own. Rage and ridicule, doubt and despair, transport and tenderness, compassion and contempt; love, jealousy, fear, fury, and simplicity; all in turn took possession of his features, whilst each of them appeared to be the sole possessor of his heart. In the several characters of Lear and Hamlet, Richard, Dorilas, Romeo, and Lusignane; in his Ranger, Bayes, Abel Drugger, Kitely, Brute, and Benedict, you saw the muscular conformations which your ideas attached to them all. In short, Nature, the mistress from whom alone this great performer borrowed all his lessons, being in herself inexhaustible, this her favourite son, marked out as her truest representative, found an unlimited scope for change and diversity in his manner of copying from her various productions. There is one part of theatrical con duct which ought unquestionably to be recorded to Mr [7:10:345]Garrick’s honour, since the cause of virtue and morality, and the formation of public manners, are considerably dependent upon it; and that is, the zeal with which he aimed at banishing from the stage all those plays which carry with them an immoral tendency, and pruning from those which do not absolutely, on the whole, promote the interests of vice, such scenes of licentiousness and libertinism as a redundancy of wit and too great liveliness of imagination have induced some of our comic writers to indulge in, and to which the sympathetic disposition of an age of gallantry and intrigue has given sanction. The purity of the English stage has certainly been much more fully established during the administration of this theatrical minister than it had ever been during preceding managements. He seems to have carried his modest, moral, chaste, and pious principles with him into the very management of the theatre itself, and rescued performers from that obloquy which had attached to the profession. Of those who were accounted blackguards, unworthy the association of the world, he made gentlemen, united them with society, and introduced them to all the domestic comforts of life. The theatre was no longer esteemed the receptacle of all vice; and the moral, the serious, the religious part of mankind, did not hesitate to partake of the rational entertainment of a play, and pass a cheerful evening, undisgusted with licentiousness, and uncorrupted by the immorality of the exhibition.

Notwithstanding the numberless and laborious avocations attendant on his profession as actor, and his station as manager, yet still his active genius was perpetually bursting forth in various little productions in the dramatic and poetical way, the merit of which cannot but make us regret his want of time for the pursuance of more extensive and important works. It is certain that his merit as an author is not of the first magnitude; but his great knowledge of men and manners, of stage effect, and his happy turn for lively and striking satire, made him generally successful; and his prologues and epilogues in particular, which are almost innumerable, possess such a degree of felicity, both in the conception and execution, as to be, in fact, unequalled. His ode on the death of Mr Pelham ran through four editions in less than six weeks. His ode on Shakspeare is a masterly piece of poetry, and, when delivered by himself, produced great effect. His alterations of Shakspeare and other authors have been at times successful, and at times exploded. The exclusion of the gravedigger’s scene from Hamlet will never be forgotten to him by the inhabitants of the gallery at Drury. Though necessary to the chasteness of the scene, they cannot bear to lose so much true sterling wit and humour; and it must be owned, that exuberances of this kind, though they hurt the uniformity, yet increase the luxuriance of the tree. Amongst his alterations may be mentioned, Every Man in his Humour, altered from Ben Johnson; Romeo and Juliet, Winter’s Tale, Catherine and Petruchio, Cymbeline, Hamlet, &c. altered and made up from Shakspeare; Gamesters, a comedy, from Shirley; Isabella, from Southerne. To these we may add, as original productions, The Farmer’s Return, and Linco’s Travels, interludes; Guardian, Lethe, Lying Valet, Miss in her Teens, Male Coquet, Irish Widow, and other comedies in two acts; Enchanter, a musical entertainment; and Lilliput. The Christmas Tale is ascribed to him, and many others.

We now bring him to the period of his retirement in the spring ⅛t' 1776, when, full of fame, having acquired a splendid fortune, and advancing into years, he thought proper to seek the repose of private life, in order to enjoy that dignified and honourable ease which he had so well earned by the activity and the merits of his dramatic reign. But short indeed was the period allotted to him for this tranquil enjoyment; for on the 20th of January 1779, he departed this life, leaving no one rival in excellence upon earth to compensate for his loss, or a hope of our ever meeting with his like again. Garrick’s Correspondence has recently been collected and published, in two volumes 4to, with a Life prefixed.