was very poor when he began life; so when he came to have money, he probably was very unskilful in giving away, and saved when he should not.  But Garrick began to be liberal as soon as he could; and I am of opinion, the reputation of avarice which he has had, has been very lucky for him, and prevented his having many enemies.  You despise a man for avarice, but do not hate him.  Garrick might have been much better attacked for living with more splendour than is suitable to a player:  if they had had the wit to have assaulted him in that quarter, they might have galled him more.  But they have kept clamouring about his avarice, which has rescued him from much obloquy and envy.’

Talking of the great difficulty of obtaining authentick information for biography, Johnson told us, ’When I was a young fellow I wanted to write the Life of Dryden, and in order to get materials, I applied to the only two persons then alive who had seen him; these were old Swinney, and old Cibber.  Swinney’s information was no more than this, “That at Will’s coffee-house Dryden had a particular chair for himself, which was set by the fire in winter, and was then called his winter-chair; and that it was carried out for him to the balcony in summer, and was then called his summer-chair.”  Cibber could tell no more but “That he remembered him a decent old man, arbiter of critical disputes at Will’s.”  You are to consider that Cibber was then at a great distance from Dryden, had perhaps one leg only in the room, and durst not draw in the other.’  Boswell.  ‘Yet Cibber was a man of observation?’ Johnson.  ‘I think not.’  Boswell.  ‘You will allow his Apology to be well done.’  Johnson.  ’Very well done, to be sure, Sir.  That book is a striking proof of the justice of Pope’s remark: 

     “Each might his several province well command,
     Would all but stoop to what they understand."’

Boswell.  ‘And his plays are good.’  Johnson.  ’Yes; but that was his trade; l’esprit du corps:  he had been all his life among players and play-writers.  I wondered that he had so little to say in conversation, for he had kept the best company, and learnt all that can be got by the ear.  He abused Pindar to me, and then shewed me an Ode of his own, with an absurd couplet, making a linnet soar on an eagle’s wing.  I told him that when the ancients made a simile, they always made it like something real.’

Mr. Wilkes remarked, that ’among all the bold flights of Shakspeare’s imagination, the boldest was making Birnamwood march to Dunsinane; creating a wood where there never was a shrub; a wood in Scotland! ha! ha! ha!’ And he also observed, that ’the clannish slavery of the Highlands of Scotland was the single exception to Milton’s remark of “The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty,” being worshipped in all hilly countries.’—­’When I was at Inverary (said he,) on a visit to my old friend, Archibald, Duke of Argyle, his dependents congratulated me on being such a favourite of his Grace.  I said, “It is then, gentlemen, truely lucky for me; for if I had displeased the Duke, and he had wished it, there is not a Campbell among you but would have been ready to bring John Wilkes’s head to him in a charger.  It would have been only,