OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1759. the light his published Correspondence has thrown upon it,
M~si. it was a great improvement, in all generous and liberal
points, on those which preceded it. Booth treated writers
of Anne much more scurvily than the writers of George the
Second were treated by Garrick. " Booth often declared,"
says his biographer, " in public company, that he and his
" partners lost money by new plays ; and that, if he were
" not obliged to it, he would seldom, give his consent to
" perform one of them." Garrick transposed and altered
often; but he never forced upon the unhappy author of a
tragedy a change in the religion of his hero, nor told a
dramatist of good esteem that he had better have turned to
an honest and laborious calling, nor complacently prided
himself on choaking -singing birds, when his stern negative
had silenced a young aspirant. Those were the achieve-
ments of manager Gibber. He was at all times fonder than
needful of his own importance, it is true : but society has no
right to consent to even the nominal depression, in the so-
called social scale, of a man whose calling exacts no common
accomplishments, and then resent the self-exaggeration
unwholesomely begotten on its own injustice. "When Junius
took offence at the player whom dukes and duchesses tolerated
at their table, it was not a matter to waste wit upon, or sar-
casm, or scathing eloquence : he simply told the " Vagabond "
to stick to his pantomimes. Even men of education were
known to have pursued Garrick, when on country visits to
noblemen of his acquaintance, with dirty, clumsily-folded
notes, passed amid the ill-concealed laughter of servants to
the great man's guest, with the address of "Mr. David
" Garrick, Player." It asked a strength which Garrick had
not, to disregard this vulgar folly; it wounded him where he
was known to be weak; it tempted him to those self-asser-