OLIVEB GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1759. from the round of a ladder to which of himself he never
JEt.3l. could have mounted, looks down with ludicrous contempt
on what Mr. Ealph would call the " implements " of his
elevation.
Let me here add, that since this portion of my book was
first written, I have had access to imprinted letters* which not
only place Grarrick in a more favourable light than his
biographers generally have shown him in, but suggest a
tenderness of consideration for what was defective in his
character, even greater than I have ventured to claim for
him. In the actual path of life he crossed Goldsmith so
often, that perhaps the reader will not think it a censurable
digression, if in some few additional pages I give him tidings
he, has not before seen of a man so famous, and whose gay,
bright, glancing little figure, reappears with such frequent
and pleasant cheerfulness in every social picture of the
time.
David G-arrick was, as all of us know, the son of a
recruiting captain whose family originally was French (the
name was Garrique), and from whom he appears to have
inherited his little. figure, his expressive eye, his happy
buoyancy of spirit, and restless vivacity of motion. His
biographers describe him acting Serjeant Kite at a private
play when he was eleven years old; and the first of these
letters I have seen, written to his father when he was fifteen,
marks exactly that bent of his tastes in describing " a very
" pretty woman, only she squints a little, as Captain Brazen
* By the kindness of my friend Mr. Golburn, whose property this most interesting
collection of Grarrick Letters has become, -with a view, as I hope, to an early
publication of them. They will form the most striking and valuable contri-
bution that has yet been made to the great actor's history.