J765 new Premier, written from Queen Anne-street the day after
iuiV. his appointment, was to David Garrick; and is the first
pleasant evidence we receive, that whatever may be the success
of his adventure in politics, there is little- chance of its
weaning him from the society of wits and men of letters to
which this narrative belongs. Burke cheerfully invokes his
friend as his "little Horace," his "lepidissime homuncio,"
to call and see his "Maecenas atavis," and "praise this
" administration of Cavendishes and Rockinghams in ode,
" and abuse their enemies in epigram."* Garrick had
arrived in England, from his foreign tour, three months
before; his old weaknesses coming back as he verged nearer
and nearer home, and, for his last few days in Paris, dis-
turbing him with visions of Powell. "I'll answer for
" nothing and nobody in a playhouse," he wrote to dolman ;
" the devil has put his hoof into it, and he was a deceiver
" from the beginning of the world. Tell me really what you
" think of Powell. I am told by several that he will bawl
" and roar. Boss, I hear, has got reputation in Lear. I don't
" doubt it. The Town is a facetious gentleman."t A few
days later, Sterne wrote to him from Bath " strange " things
of Powell ;t and when himself on the point of starting for
London, he met Beauclerc accidentally, who reported of the
new tragedian not less strangely. " What,' all my children !'
" I fear he has taken a wrong turn. Have you advised him ? "
* Q-arrick Correspondence, i. 189. " My dear Garriok," ho said in the same
letter, " you have made me perfectly happy by the friendly and obliging satis-
" faction you are so good to express on this little gleam of prosperity, which has
" at length fallen on my fortune." It was indeed but a transient gleain, for the
administration passed away in a month!
f March 10,, 1765. Peake's Memoirs, i. 141.
$ " Powell," Sterne adds,—"good heaven ! give me some one with less smoke
" and more fire. There are, who, like the Pharisees, still think they shall be
" heard for much speaking. Come—come away, my dear Garrick, and teaeli us
" another lesson." Letter dated Bath, April 6, 1765.