OLIYEE GOLDSMITH' "LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK in.
64. gratefully acknowledged; nor is there any reason to doubt
. 36. its sincerity. Beinoteness of place has in some respects the
effect of distance of time; and the great actor, doubtless not
sorry to be absent till the novelty should abate, was less
likely to be jealous in Piedmont or the Savoy than in the
green-room of Drury Lane. He knew himself yet unassailed
in what he had always felt to be his main strength, his
versatility and variety of power.* Three men were now
the Caimans, i. Ill, 112. And see an excellent letter to Powell himself, •written
from Paris in December 1764, Garrick Correspondence, i. 177-8.
* The earliest of Garrick's critics was one of the most discriminating, and is
entitled on other grounds to be listened to with respect, for he became a bishop, and,
even after he had published his book on the Prophecies, continued to think Shaks-
peare and Garrick not unworthy of his regard. Newton lived with Lord Carpenter
in Grosvenor-square, as tutor to his son, when the Goodman's Fields prodigy began
to be talked about; took additional interest in him as a fellow townsman of Lich-
field; and not only used to travel every week that distance of nearly five miles to
see the new actor, but, sending servants before-hand to keep places (necessary
then) that nothing of eye or gesture might be lost, carried to Goodman's Fields
with him all the great people he could induce to accompany him, and wrote
excellent letters of encouragement and advice to the object of his admiration. I
quote from one which is dated exactly six months from the day of Garrick's first
appearance. After telling him. that one of the masters of Westminster school who
remembered Booth and Betterton, was of opinion that in Lear he had far excelled
the first and even equalled the last, " The thing," he continues, "that strikes me
' above all others, is that variety in your acting, and your being so totally a
' different man in Lear from what you are in Richard. There is a sameness in
' every other actor. Gibber is something of a coxcomb in everything; and Wolsey,
' and Syphax, and lago, all smell strong of the essence of Lord Foppington.
' Booth was a philosopher in Gato, and was a philosopher in everything else.
' His passion in Hotspur and Lear was much of the same nature, whereas your's
' was an old man's passion, and an old man's voice and action; and in the four
' parts wherein I have seen you, Richard, Ohamont, Bayes, and Leai', I never
' saw four actors more different from one another than you are from yourself."
This letter (written, be it remembered, when Garrick was only twenty-five) helps
to explain what was meant by the celebrated prompter of Drury Lane, Waldron,
a man of discernment and even taste in poetry, when he frankly made answer, on
a question of comparison between his early master Garrick, and a later ornament
of the stage, "No man admires Mr. —•—>, sir, more than I do. He is a great
"man ! a very great man ! but Mr. Garrick, sir, bless my soul ! it was quite a
" different sort of thing." Even Horace Walpole, in one of his most elaborate
depreciations of Garrick (Coll. Lett. v. 11, 12), is unconsciously betrayed into an
admission of his unrivalled variety and versatility when he summons back two of
the Betterton race, lays under contribution the French stage, and has to pick and