The two men had at bottom a considerable regard for each other, founded upon old association, mutual services, and reciprocal respect for talents of very different orders.  But they were so widely separated by circumstances, as well as by a radical opposition of temperament, that any close intimacy could hardly be expected.  The bear and the monkey are not likely to be intimate friends.  Garrick’s rapid elevation in fame and fortune seems to have produced a certain degree of envy in his old schoolmaster.  A grave moral philosopher has, of course, no right to look askance at the rewards which fashion lavishes upon men of lighter and less lasting merit, and which he professes to despise.  Johnson, however, was troubled with a rather excessive allowance of human nature.  Moreover he had the good old-fashioned contempt for players, characteristic both of the Tory and the inartistic mind.  He asserted roundly that he looked upon players as no better than dancing-dogs.  “But, sir, you will allow that some players are better than others?” “Yes, sir, as some dogs dance better than others.”  So when Goldsmith accused Garrick of grossly flattering the queen, Johnson exclaimed, “And as to meanness—­how is it mean in a player, a showman, a fellow who exhibits himself for a shilling, to flatter his queen?” At another time Boswell suggested that we might respect a great player.  “What! sir,” exclaimed Johnson, “a fellow who claps a hump upon his back and a lump on his leg and cries, ‘I am Richard III.’?  Nay, sir, a ballad-singer is a higher man, for he does two things:  he repeats and he sings; there is both recitation and music in his performance—­the player only recites.”

Such sentiments were not very likely to remain unknown to Garrick nor to put him at ease with Johnson, whom, indeed, he always suspected of laughing at him.  They had a little tiff on account of Johnson’s Edition of Shakspeare.  From some misunderstanding, Johnson did not make use of Garrick’s collection of old plays.  Johnson, it seems, thought that Garrick should have courted him more, and perhaps sent the plays to his house; whereas Garrick, knowing that Johnson treated books with a roughness ill-suited to their constitution, thought that he had done quite enough by asking Johnson to come to his library.  The revenge—­if it was revenge—­taken by Johnson was to say nothing of Garrick in his Preface, and to glance obliquely at his non-communication of his rarities.  He seems to have thought that it would be a lowering of Shakspeare to admit that his fame owed anything to Garrick’s exertions.

Boswell innocently communicated to Garrick a criticism of Johnson’s upon one of his poems—­

  I’d smile with the simple and feed with the poor.