are disposed to question this assertion, let them turn to the lives and histories of the poets and satisfy their doubts. I know there is a tide, that flows from the very fountain-head of power, that has long run strongly in another channel, but the vicinity of Windsor Castle is of no benefit to the discipline and good order of Eton School. A wise father will no more estimate his son's improvement by the measure of his boarding-house bills and pocket money amount, than a good soldier will fix his preference on a corps, because it happens to figure in the most splendid uniform, and indulge in the most voluptuous and extravagant mess. When I returned to school I was taken as a boarder into the family of Edmund Ashby, Esq., elder brother of Waring, who had been married to my father's sister. This gentleman had a wife and three daughters, and occupied a spacious house in Peter Street, two doors from the turning out of College Street. Having been set aside by the will of his father, he was in narrow circumstances, and his style of living was that of economy upon the strictest scale. No visitor ever entered his doors, nor did he ever go out of them in search of amusement or society. Temperate in the extreme, placid and unruffled, he simply vegetated without occupation, did nothing, and had nothing to do, never seemed to trouble himself with much thinking, or interrupt the thoughts of others with much talking, and I don't recollect ever to have found him engaged with a newspaper, or a book, so that had it not been for the favors I received from a few Canary birds which the ladies kept, I might as well have boarded in the convent of La Trappe. I confess my spirit felt the gloomy influence of the sphere I lived in, and my nights were particularly long and heavy, annoyed as they were by the 1 George III. was very partial to Eton School. Dr. Quincey thus relates the incident of his suddenly meeting the king in one of the walks at Frogmore, while, together with his young friend, Lord W, he was 'practically commenting on the art of throwing stones.' 'The king,' says he, 'having first spoken with great kindness to my companion, inquiring circumstantially about his mother and grandmother, as persons particularly well known to himself, then turned his eye upon me. What passed was pretty nearly as follows: My name, it seems, from what followed, had been communicated to him as we were advancing; he did not, therefore, inquire about that. Was I of Eton? was his first question. I replied that I was not, but I hoped I should be. Had I a father living? I had not; my father had been dead about eight years. 'But you have a mother?' I had. 'And she thinks of sending you to Eton?' I answered that she had expressed such an intention in my hearing; but I was not sure whether that might not be in order to waive an argument with the person to whom she spoke, who happened to have been an Etonian. ‘Oh, but all people think highly of Eton; everybody praises Eton; your mother does right to inquire; there can be no harm in that; but the more she inquires the more she will be satisfied; that I can answer for.'-Life and Manners. RECOLLECTIONS OF GARRICK. 47 yells and howlings of the crews of the depredators, which infest that infamous quarter, and sometimes even roused and alarmed us by their pilfering attacks. In some respects, however, I was benefited by my removal from Ludfords, as I was no longer under the strict confinement of a boarding-house, but was once or twice allowed to go, under proper convoy, to the play, where for the first time in my life I was treated with the sight of Garrick in the character of Lothario; Quin played Horatio, Ryan Altamont, Mrs. Cibber Calista, and Mrs. Pritchard condescended to the humble part of Lavinia. I enjoyed a good view of the stage from the front row of the gallery, and my attention was riveted to the scene. I have the spectacle even now as it were before my eyes. Quin presented himself upon the rising of the curtain in a green velvet coat embroidered down the seams, an enormous full-bottomed periwig, rolled stockings, and high-heeled square-toed shoes; with very little variation of cadence, and in a deep full tone, accompanied by a sawing kind of action, which had more of the senate than of the stage in it, he rolled out his heroics with an air of dignified indifference, that seemed to disdain the plaudits that were bestowed upon him. Mrs. Cibber, in a key high-pitched, but sweet withal, sung or rather recited Rowe's harmonious strain, something in the manner of the Improvisatores; it was so extremely wanting in contrast, that, though it did not wound the ear, it wearied it; when she had once recited two or three speeches, I could anticipate the manner of every succeeding one; it was like a long old legendary ballad of innumerable stanzas, every one of which is sung to the same tune, eternally chiming in the ear without variation or relief. Mrs. Pritchard was an actress of a different cast, had more nature, and of course more change of tone, and variety both of action and expression: in my opinion the comparison was decidedly in her favor; but when, after long and eager ex⚫pectation, I first beheld little Garrick, then young and light and alive in every muscle and in every feature, come bounding on the stage, and pointing at the wittol Altamont and heavy-paced Horatio-heavens, what a transition!-it seemed as if a whole century had been stepped over in the transition of a single scene; old things were done away, and a new order at once brought forward, bright and luminous, and clearly destined to dispel the barbarisms and bigotry of a tasteless age, too long attached to the prejudices of custom, and superstitiously devoted to the illusions of imposing declamation. This heaven-born actor was then struggling to emancipate his audience from the slavery they were resigned to, and though at times he succeeded in throwing in some gleams of new-born light upon them, yet in general they seemed to love darkness better than light, and in the dialogue of altercation between Horatio and Lothario, bestowed far the greater show of hands upon the master of the old school than upon the founder of the new. I thank my stars, my feelings in those moments led me right; they were those of nature, and therefore could not err.' At the house of Mr. Ashby I had a room to myself, a solitude within it, and silence without; I had no plea for neglecting my studies, for I had no avocations to draw me off, and no amusements to resort to. I pursued my private studies without intermission, and having taken up the Georgics for recreation's sake, I began to entertain myself with a translation in blank verse of Virgil's beautiful description of the plague amongst the cattle, beginning at verse 478 of the third book, and continued to the end of the same, viz: Hic quondam morbo cœli miseranda coorta est As this is one of the very few samples of my 'Juvenilia,' which I have thought well enough of to preserve, I shall now insert it verbatim from my first copy, and, without repeating former Garrick's appearance on the boards of a theatre in Goodman's Fields, the 19th of October, 1741, marked a change in the style of dramatic representations in England. He abandoned the artificial declamation of the prevailing school, and adhered to nature and truth. The effect was wonderful. All the town,' wrote Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, May 26, 1742, 'is now after Garrick, a wine merchant, who is turned player at Goodman's Fields. He plays all parts, and is a very good mimic. His acting I have seen, and may say to you, who will not tell it again here, I see nothing wonderful in it; but it is heresy to say so. The Duke of Argyle says he is superior to Betterton.' 'Garrick,' said Sir Joshua Reynolds, and surely he is a more reliable judge than Walpole, 'produces more amusement than anybody.' 'No wonder, sir, that he is vain,' said Johnson, 'a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder.' Boswell. And such bellows, too. Lord Mansfield, with his cheeks like to burst; Lord Chatham, like an Eolus. I have read such notes from them to him, as were enough to turn his head.' Johnson.-True. When he whom everybody else flatters, flatters 'If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see That heart which others bleed for, bleed for me.' Boswell's Johnson, vol. ii. pp. 233, 241. 'Garrick,' said Johnson, on another occasion, 'was a very good man, the cheerfullest man of his age; a decent liver in a profession which is supposed to give indulgence to licentiousness; and a man who gives away freely, money acquired by himself. He began the world win a great hunger for money; the son of a half-pay officer, bred in a family whose study was to make fourpence do as much as others made fourpence-halfpenny do. But, when he had got money, he was very liberal.'-Ibid., vol. iii. p. 417. apologies, submit it unaltered in a single instance to the candor of the reader : 'Here once from foul and sickly vapors sprung And long-drawn sighs distend the laboring sides: As from a conduit, blood defil'd and black, And 'twixt the glew'd and unresolved jaws The rough and clammy tongue sticks fast-at first With generous wine they drench'd the closing throat- Dire madness-such as the just gods to none Their fair and sightly limbs all mangled o'er. "The lab'ring ox, while o'er the furrow'd land He trails the tardy plough, down drops at once, Forth issues bloody foam, till the last groan Gives a long close to his labors: The sad hind Unyokes his widow'd and complainful mate, Leaving the blasted and imperfect work Where the fix'd ploughshare points the luckless spot. Form cold retreat, the lawns, whose springing herb Which o'er the jutting stones to th' neighboring mead Delight as they were wont, rather afflict, With him they cheer'd, with him their joys expir'd, Famine instead stares in his hollow sides, His leaden eyeballs, motionless and fix'd, Hangs drooping down, death lays his load upon him, His useful toils, his life of service past? What though full oft he turn'd the stubborn glebe, Twas then great Juno's altar ceas'd to smoke The fearful deer league with the hostile hound, Familiar, unannoy'd. The mighty deep At every mouth disgorg'd the scaly tribe, And on the naked shore expos'd to view The various wreck: the furthest rivers felt The vast discharge and swarm'd with monstrous shapes. Death follows him through all his wiles; in vain |