��T'OTHER SIDE. Dr. Johnson and Mr. Gibbon.
JOHNSON. No, Sir ; Garrick's fame was prodigious, not only in England, but over all Europe z . Even in Russia 2 I have been told he was a proverb; when any one had repeated well, he was called a second Garrick.
GIBBON. I think he had full as much reputation as he de served.
JOHNS. I do not pretend to know, Sir, what your meaning may be, by saying he had as much reputation as he deserved ; he deserved much, and he had much.
GIB. Why, surely, Dr. Johnson, his merit was in small things only, he had none of those qualities that make a real great man.
JOHNS. Sir, I as little understand what your meaning may be when you speak of the qualities that make a great man ; it is a vague term. Garrick was no common man ; a man above the common size of men may surely, without any great impro priety, be called a great man. In my opinion he has very reasonably fulfilled the prophecy which he once reminded me of having made to his mother, when she asked me how little David went on at school 3 , that I should say to her, that he would come to be hanged, or come to be a great man. No, Sir, it is undoubtedly true that the same qualities, united with virtue or with vice, make a hero or a rogue, a great general or a highwayman. Now Garrick, we are sure, was never hanged,
1 ' Johnson said of Garrick, " Sir, au Sujet d'une savante Fille en a man who has a nation to admire Angleterre ; publiees dans le Sot- him every night may well be expected schinenie, ou Melanges de Litte'ra- to be somewhat elated.'" Life, iv. 7. ture en Russe, pour le mois de Mai, 'His death eclipsed the gaiety of 1759^.470.' Ib. ii. 417. A trans - nations.' Ib. i. 82. lation of Joseph Andrews was pub-
2 ' Even in Russia, where, as Mrs. lished in St. Petersburgh in 1772. Carter humorously observed, they Strangely enough a railway-station were just learning to walk upon their is called in Russian Vauxhall, after hind legs, an account was published the famous gardens in Chelsea.
of her.' Memoirs of Mrs. Carter, 3 Garrick was nineteen when he i. 212. It was entitled, ' Anecdotes became Johnson's pupil.
and
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