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to Richardson's, the author of Clarissa,' and I wondered to find Richardson displeased that I did not treat Cibber with more respect.' Now, Sir, to talk of respect for a player (1)!” (smiling disdainfully.) BOSWELL. "There, Sir, you are always heretical: you never will allow merit to a player." JOHNSON." Merit, Sir! what merit? Do you respect a rope-dancer or a ballad-singer?" BosWELL. "No, sir; but we respect a great player, as a man who can conceive lofty sentiments, and can express them gracefully." JOHNSON. "What! Sir, a fellow who claps a hump on his back, and a lump on his leg, and cries, I am Richard the Third?' 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." BOSWELL. "My dear Sir ! you may turn any thing into ridicule. I allow, that a player of farce is not entitled to respect; he does a little thing but he who can represent exalted characters, and touch the noblest passions, has very respectable powers; and mankind have agreed in admiring great talents for the stage. We must consider, too, that a great player does what very few are capable to do; his art is a very rare faculty. Who

(1) Perhaps Richardson's displeasure was created by Johnson's paying no respect to the age of Cibber, who was almost old enough to have been his grandfather. Cibber had left the stage, and ceased to be a player before Johnson left Oxford; so that he had no more reason to despise Cibber for that profession, than Cibber would have had to remind him of the days when he was usher at a school. - [Cibber quitted the stage in 1730, but appeared occasionally on it afterwards; particularly so late as 1744, as Pandulph in King John; so that Johnson might reasonably talk of him as being still a player.]

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can repeat Hamlet's soliloquy, To be, or not to be,' as Garrick does it?" JOHNSON. " Any body may. Jemmy, there (a boy about eight years old, who was in the room), will do as well in a week." BOSWELL. "No, no, Sir: and as a proof of the merit of great acting, and of the value which mankind set upon it, Garrick has got a hundred thousand pounds." JOHNSON. "Is getting a hundred thousand pounds a proof of excellence ? That has been done by a scoundrel commissary."

This was most fallacious reasoning. I was sure, for once, that I had the best side of the argument. I boldly maintained the just distinction between a tragedian and a mere theatrical droll; between those who rouse our terror and pity, and those who only make us laugh. "If," said I, "Betterton and Foote were to walk into this room, you would respect Betterton much more than Foote." JOHNSON. "If Betterton were to walk into this room with Foote, Foote would soon drive him out of it. Foote, Sir, quatenùs Foote, has powers superior to them all.” (1)

(1) The fact was, that Johnson could not see the passions as they rose and chased one another in the varied features of the expressive face of Garrick. Mr. Murphy remembered being in conversation with Johnson near the side of the scenes, during the tragedy of king Lear: when Garrick came off the stage, he said, "You two talk so loud, you destroy all my feelings.""Prithee," replied Johnson, "do not talk of feelings; Punch has no feelings." — C.

APPENDIX.

No. I.

66

NOTE ON CIBBER'S LIVES OF THE POETS."

[See antè, p. 149.]

IN the Monthly Review for May, 1792, there is such a correction of the above passage as I should think myself very culpable not to subjoin. "This account is very inaccurate. The following statement of facts we know to be true, in every material circumstance :-Shiels was the principal collector and. digester of the materials for the work; but, as he was very raw in authorship, an indifferent writer in prose, and his language full of Scotticisms [Theoph.], Cibber, who was a clever, lively fellow, and then soliciting employment among the booksellers, was engaged to correct the style and diction of the whole work, then intended to make only four volumes, with power to alter, expunge, or add, as he liked. He was also to supply notes occasionally, especially concerning those dramatic poets with whom he had been chiefly conversant. He also engaged to write several of the Lives; which (as we are told) he accordingly performed. He was farther useful in striking out the jacobitical and tory sentiments, which Shiels had industriously interspersed wherever he could bring them in; and as the success of the work appeared, after all, very doubtful, he was content with twenty-one pounds for his labour, besides a few sets of the books to disperse among his friends. Shiels had nearly seventy pounds, beside the advantage of many of the best Lives

in the work being communicated by friends to the undertaking; and for which Mr. Shiels had the same consideration as for the rest, being paid by the sheet for the whole. He was, however, so angry with his whiggish supervisor (THE., like his father, being a violent stickler for the political principles which prevailed in the reign of George the Second) for so unmercifully mutilating his copy, and scouting his politics, that he wrote Cibber a challenge; but was prevented from sending it by the publisher, who fairly laughed him out of his fury. The proprietors, too, were discontented in the end, on account of Mr. Cibber's unexpected industry; for his corrections and alterations in the proof-sheets were so numerous and considerable, that the printer made for them a grievous addition to his bill; and, in fine, all parties were dissatisfied. On the whole, the work was productive of no profit to the undertakers, who had agreed, in case of success, to make Cibber a present of some addition to the twenty guineas which he had received, and for which his receipt is now in the booksellers' hands. We are farther assured, that he actually obtained an additional sum; when he, soon after (in the year 1758), unfortunately embarked for Dublin, on an engagement for one of the theatres there; but the ship was cast away, and every person on board perished. There were about sixty passengers, among whom was the Earl of Drogheda, with many other persons of consequence and property.

"As to the alleged design of making the compilement pass for the work of old Mr. Cibber, the charges seem to have been founded on a somewhat uncharitable construction. We are assured that the thought was not harboured by some of the proprietors, who are still living; and we hope that it did not occur to the first designer of the work, who was also the printer of it, and who bore a respectable character.

"We have been induced to enter circumstantially into the foregoing detail of facts relating to the Lives of the Poets, compiled by Messrs. Cibber and Shiels, from a sincere regard to that sacred principle of truth, to which Dr. Johnson so rigidly adhered, according to the best of his knowledge; and

which, we believe, no consideration would have prevailed on him to violate. In regard to the matter, which we now dismiss, he had, no doubt, been misled by partial and wrong information: Shiels was the doctor's amanuensis; he had quarrelled with Cibber; it is natural to suppose that he told his story in his own way; and it is certain that he was not 'a very sturdy moralist.'”

This explanation appears to me satisfactory. It is, however, to be observed, that the story told by Johnson does not rest solely upon my record of his conversation; for he himself has published it in his Life of Hammond, where he says, "the manuscript of Shiels is now in my possession." Very probably he had trusted to Shiels's word, and never looked at it so as to compare it with "The Lives of the Poets," as published under Mr. Cibber's name. What became of that manuscript I know not. I should have liked much to examine it. I suppose it was thrown into the fire in that impetuous combustion of papers, which Johnson I think rashly executed when moribundus. BOSWELL. (1)

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(1) With more immediate reference to the statement in the text (p. 149.), I must observe, that, notwithstanding the weight which must be given to Dr. Johnson's repeated assertions on a subject in which he alleged that he had indisputable evidence in his own possession, yet there are some circumstances which seem at variance with his statements. It is true that the title-page of the first volume says, " compiled by Mr. Cibber," but all the other volumes have " compiled by Mr. Cibber and other hands;" so that Johnson was certainly mistaken in representing that Cibber was held out as the sole author. In the third vol., p. 156, the life of Betterton, the actor, is announced as "written by R. S.," no doubt Robert Shiels, and to it is appended the following note:, As Mr. Theophilus Cibber is publishing (in another work) the Lives and Character of eminent Actors,' he leaves to other gentlemen concerned in this work the account of some players, who could not be omitted herein as poets." A similar notice accompanies the Life of Booth, vol. iv. p. 178.; and again, in a note on the "Life of Thomson," vol. v. p. 211., Theophilus Cibber, in his own name, states, that he read the tragedy of Agamemnon to the theatrical synod with so much applause, that he was selected to play the part of Melisander. These circumstances prove that "a Cibber" had some share in the work; — that there was no intention to conceal that it was Theophilus; and that Robert Shiels and others were avowed assistants. Mr. Boswell, in a former passage, (see antè, Vol. I. p. 216.), intimated, that "some choice passages of these lives were