_Boswell_: 'And Garrick is a very good man, a charitable man.' _Johnson_: 'Sir, a liberal man. He has given away more money than any man in England. There may be a little vanity mixed; but he has shown that money is not his first object.' _Boswell_: 'Yet Foote used to say of him, that he walked out with the intention to do a generous action, but turning the corner of a street, he met the ghost of a halfpenny, which frightened him.' _Johnson_: 'Why, Sir, that is very true, too; for I never knew a man of whom it could be said with less certainty to-day what he will do to-morrow, than Garrick; it depends so much on his humour at the time.' _Scott_: 'I am glad to hear of his liberality. He has been represented as very saving.' _Johnson_: 'With his domestic saving we have nothing to do. I remember drinking tea with him long ago, when Peg Woffington made it, and he grumbled at her for making it too strong. He had begun to feel money in his purse, and did not know when he should have enough of it!'" Shortly after Garrick's death, Johnson accorded the actor praise that was even greater. The occasion was a dinner party, on April 24, 1779, at Topham Beauclerk's, at which Sir Joshua Reynolds, as well as Johnson and Boswell, was present. Boswell mentioned that John Wilkes had spoken of Garrick as a man who had no friend, a contention which Johnson allowed to be right. "'He had friends, but no friend,' he said. 'Garrick was so diffused, he had no man to whom he wished to unbosom himself. He found people always ready to applaud him, and that always for the same thing; so he saw life with great uniformity.'" Whereupon, Boswell, taking upon himself "for once, to fight with Goliath's weapons, and play the sophist," said: "'Garrick did not need a friend, as he got from everybody all that he wanted. What is a friend? One who supports and comforts you, while others do not. Friendship, you know, Sir, is the cordial drop "to make the nauseous draught of life go down"; but if the draught be not nauseous, if it be all sweet, there is no occasion for that drop.' _Johnson_: 'Many men would not be content to live so. I hope I should not. They would wish to have an intimate friend, with whom they might compare minds and cherish private virtues.'" One of the company mentioned Lord Chesterfield as a man who had no friend. "_Johnson_: 'There were more materials to make friendship in Garrick, had he not been so diffused.' _Boswell_: 'Garrick was pure gold, but beat out to thin leaf. Lord Chesterfield was tinsel.' _Johnson_: 'Garrick was a very good man, the most cheerful man of his age; a decent liver in a profession which is supposed to give indulgence to licentiousness; and a man who gave away, freely, money acquired by himself. He began the world with a great hunger for money; the son of a half-pay officer, bred in a family whose study was to make fourpence do as much as others made fourpence halfpenny do. But