Sir Joshua Reynolds.
��prompter.' Prior's M alone, p. 354. Goethe speaking of the theatre at Weimar said : * An actor's whole profession requires continual self- denial, and a continual existence in a foreign mask. ... If an actor ap peared to me of too fiery a nature, I gave him phlegmatic characters ; if too calm and tedious, I gave him fiery and hasty characters, that he might thus learn to lay aside him self, and assume foreign individuality.' Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe, i. 228-9. For Diderot's opinion, see Life, iv. 244, n. I.
In the Early Diary of Frances Btcrney, ii. 158, we have the follow ing instance of the two ways in which Johnson spoke of Garrick : * "They say," cried Mrs. Thrale, " that Garrick was extremely hurt at the coldness of the King's applause, and did not find his reception such as he ex pected." " He has been so long accustomed," said Mr. Seward, " to the thundering approbation of the Theatre, that a mere ' Very well,' must necessarily and naturally dis appoint him." " Sir," said Dr. John son, "he should not, in a Royal apartment, expect the hallowing and clamour of the One Shilling Gallery. The King, I doubt not, gave him as much applause, as was rationally his due; and, indeed, great and un common as is the merit of Mr. Garrick, no man will be bold enough to assert he has not had his just pro portion both of fame and profit. He has long reigned the unequalled favourite of the public ; and there fore nobody will mourn his hard fate, if the King and the Royal Family
��were not transported into rapture, upon hearing him read Lethe. Yet Mr. Garrick will complain to his friends, and his friends will lament the King's want of feeling and taste ; and then Mr. Garrick will kindly excuse the King. He will say that His Majesty might be thinking of something else ; that the affairs of America might occur to him ; or some subject of more importance than Lethe ; but, though he will say this himself, he will not forgive his friends if they do not contradict " ! But, now that I have written this satire, it is but just both to Mr. Garrick and to Dr. Johnson, to tell you what he said of him afterwards, when he discriminated his character with equal candour and humour. " Garrick," he said, " is accused of borne such unremitting prosperity with greater, if with equal modera tion. He is accused, too, of avarice ; but, were he not, he would be ac cused of just the contrary ; for he now lives rather as a prince than an actor ; but the frugality he practised, when he first appeared in the world, and which even then was perhaps beyond his necessity, has marked his character ever since ; and now, though his table, his equipage, and manner of living are all the most expensive, and equal to those of a nobleman, yet the original stain still blots his name ! Though, had he not fixed upon himself the charge of avarice, he would long since have been reproached with luxury, and with living beyond his station in magnificence and splendour." '
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