Garrick did not achieve a crowning triumph in Othello. A chocolate Moor had not then been evolved, and with audiences disposed to laugh consumedly at the thought of the nigger in The Padlock, the sooty face was a 'risque,' even for so consummate an actor. Unhappily, his lowness of stature helped to promote the cruel jest-Quin's-that this was not Othello, but Desdemona's little black Pompey without the tea-kettle.1 It is not surprising that Garrick thenceforth shelved the part Mr. Swinburne enthrones above all others. Unless the eyes of the house are won, even a Garrick's acting falls flat; but, though contemporary accounts of him in the part are consequently meagre, we may feel convinced that, as Mrs. Porter said, in his dawn, of his Lord Foppington, "though he might excel less in that, he must excel in everything."

"Wherefore art thou Romeo?" the wits asked Garrick when Barry was playing the part at the same time at the other house, for it must be confessed Garrick was not quite the ideal lover. Spranger Barry was that. By a limitation of genius, Garrick's flexible, versatile face could express all other passions better than love. Garrick was, as has already been said, par excellence a character actor; he was not statuesque enough for the junior lead born, not made. At the same time, the élan and airy mirthfulness of his Benedick-another character part-made that one of his most admired rôles. The ladies said he looked a dream in it. Garrick told Henderson he was two months rehearsing 'Much Ado' before he could satisfy himself.

1 W. H. Pyne states that Garrick himself, after his retirement, when turning over his own choice folio of Hogarth's prints,' burst into a fit of laughter when he came to the second plate in The Harlot's Progress, containing 'little Mungo,' and exclaimed, remembering the old jest, "Faith, it is devilish like."

He never played in Richard the Second nor in Julius Cæsar. For Hotspur, and Faulconbridge, and other tempestuous, soldierly parts, all thews and sinews, his physical means' were not adapted, Horace Walpole alone, possibly from more refined taste than the multitude's, thinking his Hotspur 'perfect.' In the memoir prefixed to Garrick's Correspondence we read that 'Anthony' (in Antony and Cleopatra) was not much to his mind-" for reasons which Mr. Steevens long after suggested to him; 'being deficient in those short turns and coachmanship' in which he excelled." This is one of the sentences which demonstrate that cryptic dramatic criticism did not first come in with the twentieth century.

Various newspaper comments made on Garrick in specific scenes demonstrate that, though not regularly served hot with the favourite morning rolls, there did not lack, not only eager, but acute dramatic criticism. ' Georgian folk'-to misquote one of Garrick's best-known prologues-could

Boast of Greins and Walkleys of their own.

Wonderment at Garrick's being mankind's epitome, in four parts, four actors,' was the predominant sentiAt the commencement, his emancipation from the old tragedy standard measure was proved by his being "totally a different man in Lear from what he was in Richard." Even a grudging brother-artist described him as "the most shining general player, the most universal great actor the world ever produced." Garrick took a proud delight in playing on the same night a deeply tragic and a broadly humorous character, such as Romeo and Lord Chalkstone, or Lear and Master Johnny in Cibber's The Schoolboy. After Fanny Burney had been seeing him as Lear and Abel Drugger, she wrote of the latter performance, "Never could I have imagined such a metamorphose as I saw; the

extreme meanness, the vulgarity, the low wit, the vacancy of countenance, the appearance of unlicked nature in all his motions." Grimm, in the letter already quoted, mentions how Garrick electrified a roomful of French celebrities by his immediate transition from the very soul of Macbeth to the very body of a pastrycook's apprentice who has upset his tray of tarts in the mud.

Concerning the question as to whether Garrick saw himself better in tragedy or comedy, a significant story was told by Charles Bannister, the father of the more famous Old Actor whose name we must for ever associate with the pages of Lamb. Charles Bannister sang and acted, on and off, under Garrick at Drury Lane, and, growing tired of tragic parts, begged to be allowed to play comedy. "No, no," said King David, "you may humbug the town some time longer as a tragedian, but comedy is a serious thing," a paradox which may signify that comedy makes greater demands on personal means. It has, at any rate, to abide the test of being compared with everyday manners.

The two-hour portrait painter, Louis Carmontelle, made a water-colour drawing, in Paris, of the tragic Garrick surprised by the comic Garrick who enters between folding-doors. A Mrs. Bowdler told Miss Mary Bagot that she saw Garrick on the eve of his retirement perform five of his most celebrated parts, and, on the whole, liked him better in comedy. She had been more moved by others, but never so irresistibly amused.1 Dr. Johnson was of Mrs. Bowdler's opinion. "Garrick, Madam," he was addressing Melpomene herself, the divine Sarah-"was the only actor I ever saw whom I could call a master both in tragedy and comedy; though I liked him best in comedy. A true conception of character, and natural expression of it his

1 Links with the Past, by Mrs. Charles Bagot, 210. 1901.

"Ce double portrait réprésente Garrick AD VIVUM à l'âge de quarante-neuf ans. Il fut fait sous les yeux de M. le duc d'Orléans, et passa pour un des plus parfaitement ressemblants de l'auteur, dont le mérite connu était la minutieuse fidélité dans la physionomie."-F. A. GRUYER.