Note 936 — SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23.

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 Marseilles. Ever since the success of Hughes's Siege of Damascus 'a siege had become a popular title' (ante, iii. 259, note 1).