fame. Old Cibber was the most obstinate in
refusing to recognise his merit. One night Garrick
had been playing Fribble. "You should see
him," said Cibber to a certain lord. "He is the
completest little doll of a figure—the prettiest
little figure." "But in other characters," said
the lord, "has he not great merit?" He did
not answer for a moment; then, suddenly,
"What an admirable Fribble!—such mimicking,
ambling, fidgeting! Well, he must be a
clever fellow to write up to his own character
so excellently as he has done in this part."
Later, when Fleetwood, in the green-room,
asked Cibber when they were to have another
comedy from him, "From me!" cried the old
man. "But who would take the characters?"
"Well, sir," was the answer, "there's Garrick,
Macklin, Clive, Pritchard." "Oh yes," said
Cibber, "I know that list very well; but
then, my dear fellow," he said, taking a pinch
of snuff very deliberately, "where the devil are
your actors?" Quin was neither disloyal nor
bitter. "If this young fellow be right, then
we have been all wrong," he said, truly
enough with reference to his own mouthing
style. He called Garrick "the Whitfield of
the stage;" which was in no wise a
disrespectful manner of epitomising his functions as
reformer, innovator, and unloosener of
conventional bandages. Yet no one, perhaps, suffered
more in artistic repute by this revolution than did
Quin himself, which made his present moderation
and future friendship specially honourable.

Seven months' hard work and brilliant triumph
had neither fatigued nor sated Garrick; and
his season was no sooner over in Goodman's
Fields than he set off with Mrs. Woffington
and Signora Barberini, the dancer, to try
the temper of the Irish. If his success had
been great in London, in Dublin it was
sublime. His name became a cant phrase. "As
gay as Garrick;" "That's your Garrick;"
and an epidemic which broke out about this
time, and which they pretended arose from the
overcrowded houses in Smock-alley, was long
remembered as the Garrick fever. The city
was full of "persons of quality;" and they all
crowded to see him. The lords justices, the
primate, the lord chancellor, and the speaker
went in great state to see his Busy Body; and
it was in Dublin, at this time, that the name of
Roscius was first given to him. Henceforth
his footing was secure, and his life was now one
long series of prosperities; at times, perhaps, a
little checked and broken, but always steady in
the main result—always advancing, always
prosperous.

In 1747, Garrick saw his future wife—the
Violette, as she was called—the lady-dancer,
about whose birth and belongings there was
always a mystery, and whose journey to England
was a romance in itself; for she came over from
Vienna, disguised as a page, in company with
two Hanoverian gentlemen—or what passed as
a Hanoverian baron and his suite. Among
the party on board was the handsome, lively,
and not too strait-laced Dr. Carlyle, of
Inverness, then a gay young Scottish student
returning from a Dutch university, who detected
the woman through the disguise. She was the
reputed daughter of John Veigel, a respectable
citizen of Vienna; and it was said that it
was Maria Theresa herself who made her
change her name from Veigel—a patois
corruption of Veilchen, a violet—into the prettier
French name corresponding. She had better
friends, though, and more influential patrons
in Vienna than seemed to belong, of right, to
a mere citizen's daughter, even though she had
a pretty face and a genius for dancing; but no
one ever got to the heart of the secret, or, if
any one did, it was never told. She brought
letters of introduction to the Earl of Burlington
and his family, and they took her up with
extraordinary warmth and affection. Indeed, it was
whispered about that she was nearer of kin to
the earl than my lady the countess knew of
when she first protected her; but the Violette
herself, when asked directly about her forbears,
denied that she came from Burlington House,
by the right hand or by the left, though she
said that she was of "noble birth"—as, indeed,
seemed very likely, by the manner in which
she was treated. With this Watteau-like
beauty with "the small round face, ripe
lips, and cloud of turquoise-coloured drapery
floating about her," as represented in a dainty
little miniature by Petitot, young Mr. Garrick,
the play-actor, fell in love. By all accounts,
she had fallen in love with him first, from
seeing him on the stage in one of his favourite
characters, when she fell sick of that mysterious
malady which sometimes attacks the young.
No one knew what ailed the pretty creature,
till a doctor, with brains and insight, found
out the cause, and told Lady Burlington what
was amiss. The countess had designed a very
different kind of marriage for her protégée, and
would not hear of the new manager of Drury
Lane, for all his money and talent. She forbade
their meeting, and was so strenuously opposed
to the whole thing that the lover was obliged
to disguise himself as a woman for the purpose
of conveying a letter to the Violette, which else
would never have been allowed to reach her.
Time and love, however, conquer most things,
and the engagement was at last sanctioned.
On the 25th of May, 1749, a premature
announcement in the paper set forth the
marriage of "Mr. Garrick, the comedian, to
Mademoiselle Violette, the dancer;" but when the
event actually took place, as it did on the 22nd
of June following, it was "David Garrick,
Esq., to Mademoiselle Eva Maria Violette,"
with no profession specified on either side.
After the names, came the sum of ten thousand
pounds, announced (as was the newspaper
fashion then) as the bride's fortune; of which the
Burlingtons gave six, and Garrick himself four.

Garrick's feet were now securely set on the
great ladder of success, and his whole after-life
was one series of advances. Enemies, of course,
he had—what successful man has not?—and
detractors by the score. Foote was one who