It must be allowed that this power of presentment marks the age more
powerfully than any claims of dramatic authorship. The new play-writers
did not approach Shakspeare; but they represented their age, and
repudiated the vices, in part at least, of their immediate predecessors.
In them, too, is to be observed the change from the artificial to the
romantic and natural, The scenes and persons in their plays are taken from
the life around them, and appealed to the very models from which they were
drawn.
DAVID GARRICK.--First among these purifiers of the drama is David Garrick,
who was born in Lichfield, in 1716. He was a pupil of Dr. Johnson, and
came up with that distinguished man to London, in 1735. The son of a
captain in the Royal army, but thrown upon his own exertions, he first
tried to gain a livelihood as a wine merchant; but his fondness for the
stage led him to become an actor, and in taking this step he found his
true position. A man of respectable parts and scholarship, he wrote many
agreeable pieces for the stage; which, however, owed their success more to
his accurate knowledge of the _mise en scene_, and to his own
representation of the principal characters, than to their intrinsic
merits.
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