HKB
as of Savage's The Wanderer, it might equally well be said:--'Nor can it without some degree of indignation and concern be told that he sold the copy for ten guineas.'
[485] 'Savage was now again abandoned to fortune without any other friend than Mr. Wilks; a man who, whatever were his abilities or skill as an actor, deserves at least to be remembered for his virtues, which are not often to be found in the world, and perhaps less often in his profession than in others. To be humane, generous, and candid is a very high degree of merit in any case, but those qualities deserve still greater praise when they are found in that condition which makes almost every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous, insolent, petulant, selfish, and brutal.' Johnson's Works, viii. 107.
[486] In his old age he wrote as he had written in the vigour of his manhood:--'To the censure of Collier ... he [Dryden] makes little reply; being at the age of sixty-eight attentive to better things than the claps of a play-house.' Johnson's Works vii. 295. See post, April 29, 1773, and Sept. 21, 1777.
[487] Johnson, writing of the latter half of the seventeenth century, says:--'The playhouse was abhorred by the Puritans, and avoided by those who desired the character of seriousness or decency. A grave lawyer would have debased his dignity, and a young trader would have impaired his credit, by appearing in those mansions of dissolute licentiousness.' Johnson's Works, vii. 270. The following lines in Churchill's Apology (Poems, i. 65), published in 1761, shew how strong, even at that time, was the feeling against strolling players:--
'The strolling tribe, a despicable race, Like wand'ring Arabs shift from place to place. Vagrants by law, to Justice open laid, They tremble, of the beadle's lash afraid, And fawning cringe, for wretched means of life, To Madam May'ress, or his Worship's Wife.'
[488] Johnson himself recognises the change in the public estimation:--'In Dryden's time,' he writes, 'the drama was very far from that universal approbation which it has now obtained.' Works, vii. 270.
[489] Giffard was the manager of the theatre in Goodman's Fields, where Garrick, on Oct. 19, 1741, made his first appearance before a London audience. Murphy's Garrick, pp. 13, 16.
[490] 'Colonel Pennington said, Garrick sometimes failed in emphasis; as, for instance, in Hamlet,
"I will speak daggers to her; but use none;"
instead of
"I will speak daggers to her; but use none."'
Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 28, 1773.
[491] I suspect Dr. Taylor was inaccurate in this statement. The emphasis should be equally upon shalt and not, as both concur to form the negative injunction; and false witness, like the other acts prohibited in the Decalogue, should not be marked by any peculiar emphasis, but only be distinctly enunciated. BOSWELL.
[492] This character of the Life of Savage was not written by Fielding as has been supposed, but most probably by Ralph, who, as appears from the minutes of the partners of The Champion, in the possession of Mr. Reed of Staple Inn, succeeded Fielding in his share of the paper, before the date of that eulogium. BOSWELL. Ralph is mentioned in The Dunciad, iii. 165. A curious account of him is given in Benjamin Franklin's Memoirs, i. 54-87 and 245.
[493] The late Francis Cockayne Cust, Esq., one of his Majesty's Counsel. BOSWELL.
[494] Savage's veracity was questioned, but with little reason; his accounts, though not indeed always the same, were generally consistent. 'When he loved any man, he suppressed all his faults: and, when he had been offended by him, concealed all his virtues: but his characters were generally true so far as he proceeded; though it cannot be denied that his partiality might have sometimes the effect of falsehood.' Johnson's Works, viii. 190.
[495] 1697. BOSWELL.
[496] Johnson's Works, viii. 98.