CHAP. II.] DAVID GARRICK.

liand at tragedy, lie is careful to tell us what pains he took 1759.
to ground himself on some great actor of the days of his ^t.3i
youth, to the minutest copy of look, gesture, gait, speech,
and " every motion of him;" nor does it appear that at this
time any higher impression of the tragic art prevailed. In
comedy, genius might yet be seen; it was something more
than tradition that shone in Mrs. Clive, Mrs. Pritchard,
and Mrs. Wofungton;* Gibber still occasionally (and to
good audiences) played one of his comic parts,f Quin's
Falstaff and Fondlewife were not yet passed away, and
originality, by those who had a taste for it in no very tasteful
form, might be enjoyed in Harper, Neale, Hippisley, Ben
Johnson, "Woodward, and Macklin. But the lovers were
now bellowed forth by Ryan, Bridge water and "Walker
stormed in the tyrants, and the heroes belonged exclusively
to Milward and Delane, except when Quin, turning from
what he could to what he could not do, mouthed forth
Othello, Eichard, or Lear. In such a night of tragedy, it
was with the sudden effulgence as of new-risen day that
Garrick burst upon the scene. It is not for one who can
speak but from report of others, to pretend to describe the
effect upon those who actually witnessed it.' But let me
borrow the description of a sixth-form scholar of Westminster
School, who saw Garrick's acting at the age most impressible
to all such emotions, and saw it side by side with the style
of acting it displaced; who remembered it as vividly to the

* Horace Walpole (who however was seldom a just, and never an indulgent
critic of theatres) was thus writing to Mann three days (22nd October, 1741)
after Gfarrick's first appearance at Goodman's Fields'. "I have been two or
'' three times at the play, very unwillingly ; for nothing was ever so bad as the
" actors, except the company. There is much vogue in a Mrs. "Woffington, a bad
" actress; but she has life." Cott. Lett. i. 84.

t "Old Gibber plays to-night, and all the world will be there." Walpole to
Mann, Dec. 3, 1741. CoU. Lett. i. 98.Goldsmith himself, a few months later, ridicule these