CHAP. ix.j THE ARREST AND WHAT PRECEDED IT.
sities must have been great indeed, that would have kept him 17^.
long a stranger to the theatre. aUk
The last season had been one of peculiar interest. The
year 1763 had opened with evil omen to Grarrick. For the first
time since the memorable night at which I left him in my
narrative of his triumphs at Goodman's Fields, when, in the
midst of unexampled enthusiasm, his eye fell upon a little de-
formed figure in a side box, was met by the approving glance
of an eye as bright as Ms own, and, in the admiration of Alex-
ander Pope, Ms heart swelled with the sense of fame,t Grarrick,
at the commencement of that year, felt Ms influence shaken
and Ms ground insecure. On a question of prices, the
Fribble whom Churchill has gibbetted in the Eosciad led a
riotous opposition in Ms theatre, to wMch he was compelled
to offer a modified submission; and not many weeks later,
after appearing in a comedy by Mrs. Sheridan and giving
" pencil) 10s. Qd. Doctor Goldsmith, Dr. Money lent at the Society of Arts
" (in pencil), 3Z. 3s. Feb. 14, Lent Dr. Goldsmith (in pencil), II. Is. March 5,
" Dr. Goldsmith, 15Z. 15s. May I, Lent Dr. Goldsmith, 10s. Gd. Ditto, 2s. 6d.
" July 14, Dr. Goldsmith, 291. 8s. Aug. 15, Ditto. 4Z. 4s. Sept. 1, Ditto, 51. 5s,
" Nov. 17, Lent Dr. Goldsmith, 5s. 3d. July 7, 1764, Lent Dr. Goldsmith (in
"pencil), 2s. Lent before (in pencil), 2s. 6d. April 30, 1765, Lent Dr. Goldsmith
" at the Society (in pencil), 31. 3s."
* " As I opened the part I saw our little poetical hero, dressed in black, seated
" in a side box near the stage, and viewing me with a serious and earnest attention.
'' His look shot and thrilled like lightning through my frame, and I had some
"hesitation in proceeding, from anxiety and from joy. As Eichard gradually
" blazed forth, the house was in a roar of applause, and the conspiring hand of
"Pope shadowed me with laurels." Such was Garrick's own account of the
greatest triumph of the opening of his career; and, at the close of it, after au
interval of six-and-thirty years of uninterrupted success, he told a friend with
what emotion he had seen Charles Fox in one of the side boxes, as he rushed off
the stage at the close of the second act of Lear, holding up his hands with animated
gesture expressive of the wonder of his admiration. It is very pleasing, let me add,
to discover repeated evidences, in this not very reverential age, of the deep respect,
the feeling akin to awe, with which Pope was regarded towards the close of his'
life. Even Johnson has his personal pride connected with him, and often "told us
'' with high satisfaction, the anecdote of Pope's inquiring who was the author
"of his London, and saying he will be soondeterre." (JBoswell, iii. 86.) Eeynolds,
too, like Johnson and Garrick, had his story to tell of the great little monarch, the