A Colonel Pennington, who had seen him, acutely observed another mistake-"and will speak daggers, but use none;" instead of "speak daggers, but use none." Yet he may have been right in this, as the emotion and passion of the situation might require an exceptional force on the word daggers.

His Hastings, in "Jane Shore," was one of his most elaborated characters. An admirer, who attended one of his last performances, was careful to note, on a copy of the play, every turn and inflection of the part.* This curious "report" becomes valuable, and gives a minute and excellent idea of Garrick's manner of working up a situation.

In the first scene he entered gay and courtier-like. He describes Alicia's present condition, warms up gradually, and pleads for her fervently—

"Now sunk in grief,

She never sees the sun."

When he sees Alicia, he puts on a cunning and cold air, speaking with a sort of deference

"None has a right more ample,

To task my power than you."

When she made a violent outburst, and attacked him, he walked up to her, met her eye, steadily, and poured out a number of bitter questions

"Are you

wise?

Have you the use of reason? Do you wake?"

With sudden anger

"Why am I thus pursued from place to place?"

Then giving her friendly counsels, he gradually

*This copy has fortunately been preserved.

softened, took her hand, seemed to press it with his forefingers, and when he had finished gently threw it from him, and walked up the stage. As he begged ironically, to be preserved from her tongue, his tone was so dry, cold, and petrified, that a burst of applause came from the audience. When he said

"Soft ye now!"

his voice became tender and agitated, he kindly taking her hand, and touching the ground with his knee. His voice altered again, when he asked

"What means this peevish and fantastic change?"

as if piqued at the little success of his efforts, and gradually grew almost brutal, crossing the stage two or three times, as he said

"'Tis wondrous well, I see my saint-like dame!"

Then followed his two spirited speeches. And though Gloucester had a line interposed between, he caught him up and replied so smartly, that it seemed almost one speech. It worked gradually to a climax.

In the council scene in the fourth act, when he was condemned to the scaffold, the gloom and settled despair in his eye was very intense. He was full three minutes-says this true stop-watch critic-in saying no more than six lines. As he congratulated himself in not living on, to see the miseries of his country, he wept profusely. His speech to Alicia

"Thy reason has grown wild,"

was spoken with a sort of absent distracted air. The last scene was a triumph of elaborate suffering. The adjuration

"Now mark and tremble at Heaven's just award!"

was delivered quite calmly, and in a deep tone full of pathos. As he asked her forgiveness, he knelt and appealed to Heaven with energy and great firmness. His farewell

"Good angels visit thee,"

was most affecting. He then moved very slowly to the wing, stood there a moment, said his last two sentences with a broken voice, and passed out to tremendous applause. Then returning with the guard, as Alicia said her last few words, he came up, took her hand most tenderly, and motioned back the soldiers, -led her off, as if to be still more in private, put up his prayer in a sort of whisper until he came to the line

"O should he wrong her!"

when his voice swelled, but sank again, then left her, got slowly backwards to the wing, looked back, and said, “Remember!" with a tone that seemed to the audience like the last utterance of a dying man.

All this shows a surprising study, not of mere vulgar "points," but of judicious contrast and effects.

Walpole had a poor opinion of his acting; but Walpole, as a judge of stage matters, is notoriously astray. He thought him "a very good and various player," but that Quin's Falstaff was quite as good as Garrick's Lear. Mrs. Porter and the Dumesnil were far before him in tragic passion. He was inferior to Quin in Brute and Macbeth, and to Cibber in Bayes. His Bayes was indeed original, but not the true reading. Cibber made it the burlesque of a great poet; Garrick the picture of a mere garreteer. He was a poor Lothario, a ridiculous Othello, a woeful Lord

Tornly, and Hastings." Ranger he thought suited him best, and though the town did not relish his Hotspur, he thought he succeeded in it better than anything. In this extraordinary opinion, he says he was supported by Sir C. H. Williams, and Lord Holland. It was the fashion to talk of Quin's Falstaff, but Reynolds, who had seen it, owned he was disappointed. Garrick often thought of taking up this part and during the Jubilee gave a specimen, that delighted all who saw it. It would have suited him admirably, and have made a fine pendant to his Sir John Brute. But the physical creation would have been too much for him, and he would have been overpowered in the artificial corpulence of the character. It is hard to say what was his cheval de bataille. Not certainly his Romeo, not Othello, not Falconbridge, nor Hotspur. If we were strictly limited to the choice of two parts, we might name Lear and Drugger; and yet we should have liked Kitely or Ranger, Brute or Archer. Macbeth, Richard, or Hamlet we might not have cared so much for. Fox thought Barry's Romeo much finer; a judgment, however, that loses all value, when he could think the prodigy, "Master Betty," superior. Still he was an enthusiastic admirer, and in the boxes at Drury Lane, during Garrick's Lear, he was seen one night holding up his hands in wonder and delight. One morning Gibbon called on Reynolds, after seeing Garrick's Richard, and thought he was inconsistent; for in the first part he was too "mean and creeping," and even "vulgar," and in the last quite the contrary. Cumberland thought Lear his finest part.

The characteristics of his acting, outlined by his

enemy, David Williams, are very remarkable. "In tragic parts, your execution is masterly. It is much improved within the last few years. Your province lies principally where the passions are exhibited by the poet, as agitated or wrought up to a high degree; your perfection consists in the extreme. In exaggerated gesture, and sudden bursts of passion, given in a suppressed and tender manner, you are inimitable. In the struggles and conflicts of contradictory passions, or in their mixture and combination, and when his effects are drawn by the author to a point of instant and momentary expression, there you are often excellent."

His fine reputation is bound up with the literature of the country; and readers of Fielding, and Smollet, and Sterne, will see how delighted those great writers were to record, how they had been affected by the great actor. In short, in this wonderful man's case, compliment seems to have exhausted all its shapes.*

*Admirers of "Tom Jones" will recal Partridge at Drury Lane, during Garrick's Hamlet. "Well, if that little man there, upon the stage, is not frightened, I never saw any man frightened in my life. Ay, ay; go along with you! Ay, to be sure! Who's fool then? Will you? God have mercy upon such foolhardiness! . . . Follow you? I'd follow the devil as soon. O! here he is again! No further? No, you have gone far enough already. Nay, sir, did you not yourself observe, when he found it was his own father's spirit, how his fear forsook him by degrees, and he was struck dumb with sorrow?'

"He the best player!' said Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer. 'Why I could act as well as he, myself. I am sure if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did.""-Tom Jones, bk. 16, ch. v.