en uses the word.

[927] Boswell, in answering Garrick's letter seven months later,
improved on this comparison. 'It was,' he writes, 'a pine-apple of the
finest flavour, which had a high zest indeed among the heath-covered
mountains of Scotia.' _Garrick Corres_. i. 621.

[928] See _ante_, p. 115.

[929] See _ante_, i. 97.

[930] 'Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane.' _Macbeth_, act v. sc.
8.

[931]

'From his first entrance to the closing scene
Let him one equal character maintain.'

FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet._ l. 126.

[932] I took the liberty of giving this familiar appellation to my
celebrated friend, to bring in a more lively manner to his remembrance
the period when he was Dr. Johnson's pupil. BOSWELL.

[933] See _ante_, p. 129.

[934] Boswell is here quoting the Preface to the third edition of his
_Corsica_:--'Whatever clouds may overcast my days, I can now walk here
among the rocks and woods of my ancestors, with an agreeable
consciousness that I have done something worthy.'

[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.' The play that was refused was the _Siege of
M