CHAPTER I.

DAVID GARRICK.

His Birth-Early Love of Acting-Education-Voyage to Lisbon
-His Boyhood-Samuel Johnson-His and Garrick's Journey
to London-David's Visits to the Theatre-Goes into the Wine
Business-Foote's Mot-The London of 1738-Garrick's First
Appearance in London Goodman's
Goodman's Fields Theatre - The
Licensing Act-Garrick as Harlequin-His Débût as Richard-
-Copy of the Playbill-His Marvellous Success-Quin's Mot
-Engaged for Drury Lane-His Hamlet-Abel Drugger-
Anecdotes of His Supposed Meanness-Of his Generosity-
A Jest of Quin's.

THE

HE Garrigues, the original form of the name, were of French extraction. The grandfather of the great actor was a refugee driven over to England by the revocation of the edict of Nantes. A son of his, an officer in the English army, married the daughter of a Lichfield parson, of Irish extraction, and an offspring of this marriage was David Garrick, born at Hereford, where his father, Captain Garrick, was then quartered, on February 19, 1716. The blood of three nationalities-French, Irish, English-was about equally mixed in his veins. He was educated at the Lichfield Grammar School, which he entered just as another future celebrity, a companion of his-Samuel Johnson, some seven years his senior, was leaving it.

By the time he was eleven years of age David had

begun to feel the prickings of his inborn vocation, and had organised a company of juvenile players for the performance of Farquhar's "Recruiting Officer," in which he himself acted Kite, and one of his sisters the chambermaid. A stop, however, was about this time put to such diversions by a summons from his Uncle David, a wine merchant settled in Portugal, who proposed to take him into the business, and at eleven years old little David made the voyage to Lisbon alone. But it is to be supposed that the business did not suit him, as in less than twelve months we find him back in England entertaining his good Lichfield friends with more amateur performances.

About four years afterwards his father, who had long since retired on half-pay, exchanged with a captain who had been ordered to Gibraltar. He left his wife, inconsolable at his loss, and his children at home. David, probably in virtue of his superior shrewdness and talents, for the other brothers were but poor drones, seems to have taken his father's place, and to have managed all the family affairsat least he conducted the correspondence with the captain, made known all the little domestic wants, and arranged all the money matters. These letters have been preserved, and are now in the Foster Collection at South Kensington. Although written by a mere boy, they are full of cleverness and vivacity, as well as suggestive of the res augusta domi of a