and Dr. Johnson's edition of
_Shakspere_

From Lichfield famed two giant critics come,
Tremble, ye Poets! hear them! Fe, Fo, Fum!
By Seward's arm the mangled Beaumont bled,
And Johnson grinds poor Shakspere's bones for bread.

But perhaps after all, if we eliminate Dr. Johnson, the lover of letters
gives the second place, not to Miss Seward and her circle, but to David
Garrick. Lichfield contains more than one memento of that great man. The
actor's art is a poor sort of thing as a rule. Johnson, in his tarter
moments, expresses this attitude, as when he talked of Garrick as a man
who exhibited himself for a shilling, when he called him 'a futile
fellow,' and implied that it was very unworthy of Lord Campden to have
made much of the actor and to have ignored so distinguished a writer as
Goldsmith, when thrown into the company of both. Still undoubtedly
Johnson's last word upon Garrick is the best--'his death has eclipsed the
gaiety of nations and diminished the public stock of harmless pleasure.'
We who live more than a hundred years later are able to recognize that
Garrick has been the one great actor from that age to this. As a rule
the mummers are mimics and little more, and generations go on, giving
them their brief but glorious hour of fame, and then leaving them as mere
names in the history of the stage. Garrick was preserved from this fate,
not only by the circumstance that he had an army of distinguished
literary friends, but by his interesting personality and by his own
writings. Many lines of his plays and prologues have become part of
current speech. Moreover his must have been a great personality, as
those of us who have met Sir Henry Irving in these latter days have
realized that his was also a great personality. It is fitting,
therefore, that these two great actors, the most famous of an
interesting, if not always an heroic profession, should lie side by side
in Westminster Abbey.

I now come to my toast "The memory of Dr. Johnson." After all, Johnson
was the greatest of all Lichfieldians, and one of the great men of his
own and of all ages. We may talk about him and praise him because we
shall be the better for so doing, but we shall certainly say nothing new.
One or two points, however, seem to me worthy of emphasis in this company
of Johnsonians. I think we should resent two popular fallacies which you
will not hear from literary students, but only from one whom it is
conveni