rant, formal and affected attitudes, and a heavy stilted style of
declamation. Betterton died in 1710, and six years after, in 1716,
Garrick was born. About twenty years after, in 1737, Samuel Johnson
and his friend and pupil, David Garrick, set out from Lichfield on
their way to London. In spite of the differences in their ages, and
their relationship of master and pupil, a hearty friendship had sprung
up between them, and one destined, in spite of Johnson's occasional
resentment at the actor's success in life, to last till it was ended
by the grave. Much of Johnson's occasional harshness and almost
contemptuous attitude towards Garrick was, I fear, the result of the
consciousness that his old pupil had thoroughly succeeded in life,
and had reached the highest goal possible in the career which he had
chosen; while he himself, though looked up to as the greatest scholar
of his time, was conscious, as he shows us in his own diary, of how
much more he might have done but for his constitutional indolence.

Garrick's family was of French origin, his father having come over to
England during the persecution of the Huguenots in 1687, and on his
mother's side he had Irish blood in his veins; so that by descent he
was a combination of French, English, and Irish, a combination by no
means unpromising for one who was going to be an actor.

On reaching London, Garrick enrolled his name in Lincoln's Inn, and
was looking about him to see what would turn up, when the news of his
father's death reached him. There is no doubt that, if Garrick had
consulted his own wishes only, he would at once have gone upon the
stage. But fortunately, perhaps, for his future career, he could not
bear to grieve his mother's heart by adopting at once, and at such
a time when she was crushed with some sorrow for her great loss, a
calling which he knew she detested so heartily.