DAVID, Esq. the great Roscius of his age and country, who for nearly 40 years shone the brightest luminary in the hemisphere of the stage, was born at the Angel Inn at Hereford, in the year 1716. His father, Captain Peter Garrick, was a French refugee, and had a troop of horse which were then quartered in that city. This rank he maintained in the army for several years, and had a majority at the time of his death; that event, however, prevented him from ever enjoying it. Mr Garrick received the first rudiments of his education at the free-school at Litchfield; which he afterwards completed at Roehelton, under the celebrated Mr Colson, since mathematical professor at Cambridge. Dr Johnson and he were fellow-students at the same school; and it is a curious fact, that these two celebrated geniuses came up to London in the same coach, with the intention of putting themselves into active life. On the 9th of March 1736, he was entered at the honourable society of Lincoln's Inn. The study of the law, however, he soon quitted; and followed for some time the employment of a wine merchant: but that too disagreeing him, he gave way at last to the irresistible bias of his mind, and joined a travelling company of comedians at Ipswich in Suffolk, where he went by the name of Lyttle. Having in this poor school of Apollo got some acquaintance with the theatrical art, he burst at once upon the world, in the year 1740-1, in all the lustre of perfection, at the little theatre in Goodman's Fields, then under the direction of Henry Giffard.

The character he first performed was Richard III. in which, like the sun bursting from behind a cloud, he displayed in the earliest dawn even more than meridian brightness. His excellence dazzled and astonished every one; and the seeing a young man, in no more than his 24th year, and a novice in reality to the stage, reaching at one single step to that height of perfection which maturity of years and long practical experience had not been able to bestow on the most capital performers of the English stage, was a phenomenon that could not but become the object of universal speculation and of as universal admiration. The theatres at the west end of the town were deserted; Garrick, Goodman's Fields, from being the rendezvous of citizens and citizens' wives alone, became the resort of all ranks of men; and Mr Garrick continued to act till the close of the season.

Having very advantageous terms offered him for the performing in Dublin during some part of the summer (1741), he went over thither, where he found the fame just homage paid to his merit which he had received from his own countrymen. To the service of the latter, however, he esteemed himself more immediately bound; and therefore in the ensuing winter, engaged himself to Mr Fleetwood, then manager of Drury Lane; in which theatre he continued till the year 1743, when he again went over to Ireland, and continued there the whole season, joint manager with Mr Sheridan in the direction and profits of the theatre royal in Smock Alley. From thence he returned to England, and was engaged for the season of 1746 with Mr Rich at Covent Garden. This was his last performance as a hired actor: for in the close of that season, Mr Fleetwood's patent for the management of Drury Lane being expired, and that gentleman having no inclination further to pursue a design by which, from his want of acquaintance with the proper conduct of it, or some other cause, he had considerably impaired his fortune; Mr Garrick, in conjunction with Mr Lacy, purchased the property of that theatre, together with the renovation of the patent; and in the winter of 1747, opened it with the greatest part of Mr Fleetwood's company, and with the great additional strength of Mr Barry, Mrs Pritchard, and Mrs Cibber, from Covent Garden.

Were we to trace Mr Garrick through the several occurrences of his life,—a life so active, so busy, and so full of occurrences as his, we should swell this account to many pages. Suffice it to say, he continued in the unmitigated enjoyment of his fame and unrivalled excellence to the moment of his retirement. His universality of excellence was never once attacked by competition. Tragedy, comedy, and farce, the lover and the hero, the jealous husband who suspects his wife without cause, and the thoughtless lively rake who attacks her without design, were all alike his own. Rage and ridicule, doubt and despair, transport and tenderness, compassion and contempt; love, jealousy, fear, fury, and simplicity; all took in turn possession of his features, while each of them in turn appeared to be the sole possessor of his heart. In the several characters of Lear and Hamlet, Richard, Dorilas, Romeo, and Luigiane; in his Ranger, Bayes, Dragger, Kiteley, Brute, and Benedict, you saw the most curious conformations that your ideas attached to them all. In short, Nature, the mistress from whom alone this great performer borrowed all his lessons, being in herself inexhaustible, this her darling son, marked out for her trait representative, found an unlimited scope for change and diversity in his manner of copying from her various productions. There is one part of theatrical conduct which ought unquestionably to be recorded to Mr Garrick's honour, since the cause of virtue and morality, and the formation of public manners, are considerably dependent upon it; and that is, the zeal with which he aimed to banish from the stage all those plays which carry with them an immoral tendency, and to prune from those which do not absolutely, on the whole, promote the interests of vice, such scenes of licentiousness and liberty, as a redundancy of wit and too great liveliness of imagination have induced some of our comic writers to indulge themselves in, and to which the sympathetic disposition of our age of gallantry and intrigue has given sanction. The purity of the English stage has certainly been much more fully established during the administration of this theatrical minister, than it had ever been during preceding managements. He seems to have carried his modest, moral, chaste, and pious principles with him into the very management of the theatre itself, and refused performers from that obloquy which had attached to the profession. Of those who were accounted blackguards, unworthy the association of the world; he made gentlemen, united them with society, and introduced them to all the domestic comforts of life. The theatre was no longer esteemed the receptacle of all vice; and the moral, the serious, the religious part of mankind, did not hesitate to partake of the rational entertainment of a play, and pass a cheerful evening undisturbed with the licentiousness, and uncorrupted by the immorality, of the exhibition.

Notwithstanding the numberless and laborious avocations attendant on his profession as an actor, and his station as a manager; yet still his active genius was perpetually bursting forth in various little productions in the dramatic and poetical way, whose merit cannot but make us regret his want of time for the pursuance of more extensive and important works. It is certain that his merit as an author is not of the first magnitude; but his great knowledge of men and manners, of flage effect, and his happy turn for lively and striking satire, made him generally successful; and his prologues and epilogues in particular, which are almost innumerable, possess such a degree of happiness, both in the conception and execution, as to stand unequalled. His ode on the death of Mr Pelham ran through four editions in less than six weeks. His Ode on Shakespeare is a masterly piece of poetry; and when delivered by himself, was a most capital exhibition. His alterations of Shakespeare and other authors have been at times successful, and at times exploded. The exclusion of the gravediggers scene from Hamlet will never be forgotten to him by the inhabitants of the gallery at Drury. Though necessary to the chasteness of the scene, they cannot bear to lose so much true sterling wit and humour; and it must be owned, that exuberances of that kind, though they hurt the uniformity, yet increase the luxuriance of the tree. Among his alterations the following are part: Every Man in his Humour, altered from Ben Johnson; Romeo and Juliet, Winter's Tale, Catherine and Petruchio, Cymbeline, Hamlet, &c. altered and made up from Shakespeare; Gamesters, a comedy, from Shirley; Isabella, from Southerne. To these we add, as original productions, The Farmer's Return, and Linco's Travels, interludes; Guardian, Lethe, Living Valet, Mifs in her Teens, Male Coquet, Irish Widow, and other comedies in two acts; Enchanter, a musical entertainment; Lilliput: the Chriftmas Tale is ascribed to him, and many others.

We now bring him to the period of his retirement in the spring of 1776; when, full of fame, with the acquirement of a splendid fortune, and growing into years, he thought proper to seek the vale of life, to enjoy that dignified and honourable ease which was compatible with his public situation, and which he had so well earned by the activity and the merits of his dramatic reign. But very short indeed was the period allotted to him for this precious enjoyment: for on the 23th of January 1779, he departed this life, leaving no one rival in excellence upon earth to compensate for his loss, or a hope of our ever meeting with his like again.