Those who have undergone a dreadful operation,are not very fond of seeing the operator again.'GARRICK.'Yes,I know enough of that.
There was a reverend gentleman,(Mr.Hawkins,)who wrote a tragedy,the SIEGE of something,which I refused.'HARRIS.'So,the siege was raised.'JOHNSON.'Ay,he came to me and complained;and told me,that Garrick said his play was wrong in the CONCOCTION.Now,what is the concoction of a play?'(Here Garrick started,and twisted himself,and seemed sorely vexed;for Johnson told me,he believed the story was true.)GARRICK.'I--I--I--said FIRSTconcoction.'JOHNSON.(smiling,)'Well,he left out FIRST.And Rich,he said,refused him IN FALSE ENGLISH:he could shew it under his hand.'GARRICK.'He wrote to me in violent wrath,for having refused his play:"Sir,this is growing a very serious and terrible affair.I am resolved to publish my play.I will appeal to the world;and how will your judgement appear?"I answered,"Sir,notwithstanding all the seriousness,and all the terrours,I have no objection to your publishing your play;and as you live at a great distance,(Devonshire,I believe,)if you will send it to me,I will convey it to the press."I never heard more of it,ha!ha!ha!'
On Friday,April 10,I found Johnson at home in the morning.We resumed the conversation of yesterday.He put me in mind of some of it which had escaped my memory,and enabled me to record it more perfectly than I otherwise could have done.He was much pleased with my paying so great attention to his recommendation in 1763,the period when our acquaintance began,that I should keep a journal;and I could perceive he was secretly pleased to find so much of the fruit of his mind preserved;and as he had been used to imagine and say that he always laboured when he said a good thing--it delighted him,on a review,to find that his conversation teemed with point and imagery.
I said to him,'You were yesterday,Sir,in remarkably good humour:but there was nothing to offend you,nothing to produce irritation or violence.There was no bold offender.There was not one capital conviction.It was a maiden assize.You had on your white gloves.'
He found fault with our friend Langton for having been too silent.
'Sir,(said I,)you will recollect,that he very properly took up Sir Joshua for being glad that Charles Fox had praised Goldsmith's Traveller,and you joined him.'JOHNSON.'Yes,Sir,I knocked Fox on the head,without ceremony.Reynolds is too much under Fox and Burke at present.He is under the Fox star and the Irish constellation.He is always under some planet.'BOSWELL.'There is no Fox star.'JOHNSON.'But there is a dog star.'BOSWELL.
'They say,indeed,a fox and a dog are the same animal.'
We dined together with Mr.Scott (now Sir William Scott his Majesty's Advocate General,)at his chambers in the Temple,nobody else there.The company being small,Johnson was not in such spirits as he had been the preceding day,and for a considerable time little was said.
Talking of fame,for which there is so great a desire,I observed how little there is of it in reality,compared with the other objects of human attention.'Let every man recollect,and he will be sensible how small a part of his time is employed in talking or thinking of Shakspeare,Voltaire,or any of the most celebrated men that have ever lived,or are now supposed to occupy the attention and admiration of the world.Let this be extracted and compressed;into what a narrow space will it go!'I then slily introduced Mr.
Garrick's fame,and his assuming the airs of a great man.JOHNSON.
'Sir,it is wonderful how LITTLE Garrick assumes.No,Sir,Garrick fortunam reverenter habet.Consider,Sir:celebrated men,such as you have mentioned,have had their applause at a distance;but Garrick had it dashed in his face,sounded in his ears,and went home every night with the plaudits of a thousand in his CRANIUM.
Then,Sir,Garrick did not FIND,but MADE his way to the tables,the levees,and almost the bed-chambers of the great.Then,Sir,Garrick had under him a numerous body of people;who,from fear of his power,and hopes of his favour,and admiration of his talents,were constantly submissive to him.And here is a man who has advanced the dignity of his profession.Garrick has made a player a higher character.'SCOTT.'And he is a very sprightly writer too.'JOHNSON.'Yes,Sir;and all this supported by great wealth of his own acquisition.If all this had happened to me,I should have had a couple of fellows with long poles walking before me,to knock down every body that stood in the way.Consider,if all this had happened to Cibber or Quin,they'd have jumped over the moon--Yet Garrick speaks to US.'(smiling.)BOSWELL.'And Garrick is a very good man,a charitable man.'JOHNSON.'Sir,a liberal man.
He has given away more money than any man in England.There may be a little vanity mixed;but he has shewn,that money is not his first object.'BOSWELL.'Yet Foote used to say of him,that he walked out with an intention to do a generous action;but,turning the corner of a street,he met with the ghost of a half-penny,which frightened him.'JOHNSON.'Why,Sir,that is very true,too;for I never knew a man of whom it could be said with less certainty to-day,what he will do to-morrow,than Garrick;it depends so much on his humour at the time.'SCOTT.'I am glad to hear of his liberality.He has been represented as very saving.'
JOHNSON.'With his domestick saving we have nothing to do.Iremember drinking tea with him long ago,when Peg Woffington made it,and he grumbled at her for making it too strong.He had then begun to feel money in his purse,and did not know when he should have enough of it.'
When Johnson told this little anecdote to Sir Joshua Reynolds,he mentioned a circumstance which he omitted to-day:--'Why,(said Garrick,)it is as red as blood.'--BOSWELL.
We talked of war.JOHNSON.'Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier,or not having been at sea.'
