Except for the part he played in Johnson's Irene, we have heard little of David Garrick since he came to London in 1737 "with three-halfpence in his pocket."

He at first entered Lincoln's Inn to study the law, but he had a passion for the stage and made his first appearance in the part of a harlequin. Unlike Johnson, he did not have to face a long period of poverty and 'cold obscurity'; he received a legacy of £1000 and before he had spent it all, his acting of the part of Richard III in 1741 quickly made him famous.

Mr Pope declared: "That young man never had his equal as an actor and he never will have a rival," and there were "a dozen dukes of a night" at the theatre in Goodman's Fields.

He made large sums of money and in a few years' time became manager of Drury Lane theatre, where he tried hard, but in vain, to make Johnson's tragedy a success.

In the bitterness of his early struggle Johnson was no doubt a little jealous of his old pupil.

"His being outstripped by his pupil" says Boswell "in the race of immediate fame, as well as of fortune, probably made him feel some indignation, as thinking that whatever might be Garrick's merits in his art, the reward was too great when compared with what the most successful efforts of literary labour could attain.... His schoolfellow and friend, Dr Taylor, told me a pleasant anecdote of Johnson's triumphing over his pupil David Garrick. When that great actor had played some little time at Goodman's fields, Johnson and Taylor went to see him perform, and afterwards passed the evening at a tavern with him and old Giffard[22]. Johnson ... after censuring some mistakes in emphasis which Garrick had committed in the course of that night's acting, said, 'the players, Sir, have got a kind of rant, with which they run on, without any regard to accent or emphasis.' Both Garrick and Giffard were offended at this sarcasm, and endeavoured to refute it; upon which Johnson rejoined, 'Well now, I'll give you something to speak, with which you are little acquainted, and then we shall see how just my observation is. That shall be the criterion. Let me hear you repeat the ninth Commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."' Both tried at it, said Dr Taylor, and both mistook the emphasis, which should be upon not and false witness. Johnson put them right, and enjoyed his victory with great glee."

Whether Johnson was right or not may still be argued, but he loved to get Davy back at school again. Garrick, too, retained some of his school-boy tricks of mimicry:

"He could imitate Johnson very exactly.... I recollect his exhibiting him to me one day, as if saying, 'Davy has some convivial pleasantry about him, but 'tis a futile fellow;' which he uttered perfectly with the tone and air of Johnson."

Johnson's provincial accent (he pronounced once as woonse) gave Garrick another opening:

"Garrick sometimes used to take him off, squeezing a lemon into a punch-bowl, with uncouth gesticulations, looking round the company, and calling out, 'Who's for poonsh?'"

Johnson, for his part, never quite got rid of his feeling of contempt for the actor's profession. He often discussed it with Boswell:

"Boswell. 'Sir ..., 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?"' ... Boswell. 'My dear Sir! you may turn anything into ridicule ... a great player does what very few are capable to do: his art is a very rare faculty. Who can repeat Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be, or not to be," as Garrick does it?' Johnson. 'Anybody may. Jemmy, there (a boy about eight years old, who was in the room), will do it 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.'"

Poor Bozzy! "I was sure, for once," he says, "that I had the best side of the argument." As if that made any difference to Johnson when he was "talking for victory"!

Both Garrick and Johnson were lovers of books—but in a different way. Johnson was "born to grapple with whole libraries," as Boswell's uncle said, but he did not treat a rare volume with the tender care of a collector. When he was putting his books in order, he wore a pair of large gloves "such as hedgers use," and "buffeted" them so that clouds of dust flew round him. When he was reading a new book it was said that "he tore out the heart of it"; when he was tidying his old ones it is to be feared that he sometimes tore off the covers of them. Garrick had some old and valued editions, and seems to have offended Johnson by hesitating to lend them to him. Even Boswell admits that "considering the slovenly and careless manner in which books were treated by Johnson, it could not be expected that scarce and valuable editions should have been lent to him."

Garrick, moreover, had learnt by experience. Here is the story as he told it to Miss Burney:

"'David!' said Johnson, 'will you lend me your Petrarca [23]?' 'Y-e-s, Sir!' 'David! you sigh?' 'Sir—you shall have it certainly.' Accordingly the book, stupendously bound, I sent to him that very evening. But scarcely had he taken it in his hands, when, as Boswell tells me, he poured forth a Greek ejaculation and a couplet or two from Horace, and then in one of those fits of enthusiasm which always seem to require that he should spread his arms aloft, he suddenly pounces my poor Petrarca over his head upon the floor. And then, standing for several minutes lost in abstraction, he forgot probably that he had ever seen it."

As his old schoolmaster, Johnson took good care that Garrick should not suffer from swelled head:

"Not very long after the institution of our club, Sir Joshua Reynolds was speaking of it to Garrick. 'I like it much, (said he,) I think I shall be of you.' When Sir Joshua mentioned this to Dr Johnson, he was much displeased with the actor's conceit. 'He'll be of us, (said Johnson) how does he know we will permit him? The first Duke in England has no right to hold such language.' However, when Garrick was regularly proposed some time afterwards, Johnson, though he had taken a momentary offence at his arrogance, warmly and kindly supported him, and he was accordingly elected, was a most agreeable member, and continued to attend our meetings to the time of his death."

Each of them, indeed, was ready to help the other when he could. When the advertisement of Johnson's Dictionary appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine, there was printed beneath it a complimentary ode, written by Garrick, and ending with the lines:

When Drury Lane theatre was first opened under the management of Garrick, the prologue (one of the two decent prologues in the language, according to Byron) was written by Johnson. It is a fine appeal to the public to support Garrick in ennobling the stage by the revival of Shakespeare:

The truth was, as Sir Joshua Reynolds said:

"Johnson considered Garrick to be as it were his property. He would allow no man either to blame or to praise Garrick in his presence, without contradicting him."

Boswell discovered this, as we have seen, at the famous meeting in Tom Davies's back parlour.

Garrick died in 1779 and was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. His death provoked one of the most famous of all Johnson's sentences:

"That stroke of death" he wrote, "has eclipsed the gaiety of nations."

Of his personal character Johnson said even finer things and when Boswell tried to press him, he retired, as usual, defeated:

"Johnson. 'Garrick was a very good man, the cheerfullest man of his age; a decent liver in a profession which is supposed to give indulgence to licentiousness; and a man who gave away, freely, money acquired by himself. He began the world with a great hunger for money; the son of a half-pay officer, bred in a family, whose study was to make four-pence do as much as others made four-pence halfpenny do. But, when he had got money, he was very liberal....'

[Boswell] 'You say, Sir, his death eclipsed the gaiety of nations.' Johnson. 'I could not have said more nor less. It is the truth; eclipsed, not extinguished; and his death did eclipse; it was like a storm.' Boswell. 'But why nations? Did his gaiety extend farther than his own nation?' Johnson. 'Why, Sir, some exaggeration must be allowed. Besides, nations may be said—if we allow the Scotch to be a nation, and to have gaiety,—which they have not. You are an exception, though. Come, gentlemen, let us candidly admit that there is one Scotchman who is cheerful.' Beauclerk. 'But he is a very unnatural Scotchman.'"

Oliver Goldsmith once wrote a series of playful epitaphs for his friends. These were his first two lines on Garrick: