ion as
honorable to himself as it was ill-deserved by its object. Time would
not suffice, had I as many hours as I have minutes before me, to tell
you of all the acts of generosity that this mean man, this niggardly
actor, performed in his lifetime. One characteristic anecdote will
suffice. When Whitfield was building his Tabernacle in Tottenham Court
Road, he employed one of the carpenters who worked for Garrick at
Drury Lane. Subscriptions for the Tabernacle do not seem to have
come in as fast as they were required to pay the workmen, so that the
carpenter had to go to Garrick to ask for an advance. When pressed for
his reason he confessed that he had not received any wages from Mr.
Whitfield. Garrick made the advance asked for, and soon after quietly
set out to pay a visit to Mr. Whitfield, when, with many apologies for
the liberty he was taking, he offered him a five hundred pound bank
note as his subscription towards the Tabernacle. Considering that
Garrick had no particular sympathy with Nonconformists, this action
speaks as much for his charity as a Christian as it does for his
liberality as a man.

Perhaps Richard III. remained Garrick's best Shakesperean character.
Of course he played Cibber's version and not Shakespeare's. In fact,
many of the Shakesperean parts were not played from the poet's own
text, but Garrick might have doubted whether even his popularity
would have reconciled his audiences to the unadulterated poetry of our
greatest dramatist.

Next to Richard, Lear would seem to have been his best Shakesperean
performance. In Hamlet and Othello he did not equal Betterton; and
in the latter, certainly from all one can discover, he was infinitely
surpassed by Edmund Kean. In fact Othello was not one of his great
parts. But in the wide range of characters which he undertook, Garrick
was probably never equalled. A poor actor named Everard, who was first
brought out as a boy by Garrick, says: "Such or such an actor in their
respective _fortes_ have been allowed to play such or such a part
equally well as him; but could they perform Archer and Scrub like
him? and Abel Drugger, Ranger, and Bayes, and Benedick; speak his own
prologue to _Barbarossa_, in the character of a country-boy, and in a
few minutes transform himself in the same play to _Selim_? Nay, in the
same night he has played _Sir John Brute_ and the _Guardian, Romeo_
and _Lord Chalkstone, Hamlet_ and _Sharp, King Lear_ and _Fribble,
King Richar