"If 'tis true, as you say, that I've injured a letter,
I'll change my note soon, and I hope for the better.
May the just right of letters as well as of men,
Hereafter be fixed by the tongue and the pen.
Most devoutly I wish that they both have their due,
And that _I_ may be never mistaken for _U_."

Comparing Garrick with Betterton, it must be remembered that he was
more exposed to the attacks of envy from the very universality of
his success. Never, perhaps, was there a man in any profession
who combined so many various qualities. A fair poet, a most fluent
correspondent, an admirable conversationalist, possessing a person
of singular grace, a voice of marvellous expressiveness, and a
disposition so mercurial and vivacious as is rarely found in any
Englishman, he was destined to be a great social as well as a great
artistic success. He loved the society of men of birth and fashion; he
seems to have had a more passionate desire to please in private even
than in public, and almost to have justified the often quoted couplet
in Goldsmith's "Retaliation."

"On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, 'Twas only
that when he was off he was acting."

Some men, envious of the substantial fortune which he realized by
almost incessant hard work, by thorough good principle with regard
to money, and by a noble, not a paltry, economy, might call him mean;
though many of them knew well, from their own experience, that his
nature was truly generous--his purse, as well as his heart, ever open
to a friend, however little he might deserve it. Yet they sneered
at his want of reckless extravagance, and called him a miser. The