00000290.htm

CHAP, ii.] DAVID GARRICK.

that brilliant lot for which he pays so dearly. His triumphs 1759.
had need be bright and dazzling, for their fires are spent as •&*• 31.
soon as kindled; his enjoyments intense, for of all mental
influences they wither soonest. He may plant in infinite
hearts the seeds of goodness, of ideal beauty, and of practical
virtue; but with their fruits Ms name will not be remembered,
or remembered only as a name. And surely, if he devotes
a genius that might command success in any profession, to
one whose rewards, if they come at all, must be immediate
as the pleasure and instruction it diffuses, it is a short-sighted
temper that would eclipse the pleasure and deny the rewards.
The point of view at this time taken by Goldsmith was,
in fact, obscured by his own unlucky fortunes; but the
injustice he shrunk from committing in the case of the
prosperous painter, Mr. Reynolds, he should not thus care-
lessly have inflicted on the prosperous actor, Mr. Garrick.
If to neither artist might be conceded the claim of creative
genius, at least the one might have claimed to be a painter of
portraits, even as the other was. Uneasy relations, indeed,
which only exist between author and actor, have had a mani-
fest tendency at all times unfairly to disparage the actor's
intellectual claims, and to set any of the inferior arts above
them. Nevertheless, the odds might be made more even. .
The deepest and rarest beauties of poetry are those which the
actor cannot grasp; but, in the actor's startling triumphs,
whether of movement, gesture, look, or tone, the author has
no great share. Thus, were accounts fairly struck with the
literary class, a Garrick might be honestly left between the
gentle and grand superiority of a Shakspeare on the one hand,
who, from the heights of his immeasurable genius, smiles
down help and fellowship upon him; and the eternal petulance
and pretensions of an Arthur Murphy on the other, who,



	CHAP, ii.] DAVID GARRICK. that brilliant lot for which he pays so dearly. His triumphs 1759. had need be bright and dazzling, for their fires are spent as •&*• 31. soon as kindled; his enjoyments intense, for of all mental influences they wither soonest. He may plant in infinite hearts the seeds of goodness, of ideal beauty, and of practical virtue; but with their fruits Ms name will not be remembered, or remembered only as a name. And surely, if he devotes a genius that might command success in any profession, to one whose rewards, if they come at all, must be immediate as the pleasure and instruction it diffuses, it is a short-sighted temper that would eclipse the pleasure and deny the rewards. The point of view at this time taken by Goldsmith was, in fact, obscured by his own unlucky fortunes; but the injustice he shrunk from committing in the case of the prosperous painter, Mr. Reynolds, he should not thus care- lessly have inflicted on the prosperous actor, Mr. Garrick. If to neither artist might be conceded the claim of creative genius, at least the one might have claimed to be a painter of portraits, even as the other was. Uneasy relations, indeed, which only exist between author and actor, have had a mani- fest tendency at all times unfairly to disparage the actor's intellectual claims, and to set any of the inferior arts above them. Nevertheless, the odds might be made more even. . The deepest and rarest beauties of poetry are those which the actor cannot grasp; but, in the actor's startling triumphs, whether of movement, gesture, look, or tone, the author has no great share. Thus, were accounts fairly struck with the literary class, a Garrick might be honestly left between the gentle and grand superiority of a Shakspeare on the one hand, who, from the heights of his immeasurable genius, smiles down help and fellowship upon him; and the eternal petulance and pretensions of an Arthur Murphy on the other, who,