'
[935] See _ante_, i. 148, and _post_, Nov. 21.
[936] I have suppressed my friend's name from an apprehension of
wounding his sensibility; but I would not withhold from my readers a
passage which shews Mr. Garrick's mode of writing as the Manager of a
Theatre, and contains a pleasing trait of his domestick life. His
judgment of dramatick pieces, so far as concerns their exhibition on the
stage, must be allowed to have considerable weight. But from the effect
which a perusal of the tragedy here condemned had upon myself, and from
the opinions of some eminent criticks, I venture to pronounce that it
has much poetical merit; and its authour has distinguished himself by
several performances which shew that the epithet _poetaster_ was, in the
present instance, much misapplied. BOSWELL. Johnson mentioned this
quarrel between Garrick and the poet on March 25, 1773 (_Piozzi
Letters_, i. 80). 'M---- is preparing a whole pamphlet against G----,
and G---- is, I suppose, collecting materials to confute M----.' M----
was Mickle, the translator of the _Lusiad_ and author of the _Ballad of
Cumnor Hall_ (_ante_, ii. 182). Had it not been for this 'poetaster,'
_Kenilworth_ might never have been written. Scott, in the preface, tells
how 'the first stanza of _Cunmor Hall_ had a peculiar species of
enchantment for his youthful ear, the force of which is not even now
entirely spent.
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