"Not very long after the institution of our club, Sir Joshua Reynolds was speaking of it to Garrick. 'I like it much, (said he,) I think I shall be of you.' When Sir Joshua mentioned this to Dr Johnson, he was much displeased with the actor's conceit. '_He'll be of us_, (said Johnson) how does he know we will _permit_ him? The first Duke in England has no right to hold such language.' However, when Garrick was regularly proposed some time afterwards, Johnson, though he had taken a momentary offence at his arrogance, warmly and kindly supported him, and he was accordingly elected, was a most agreeable member, and continued to attend our meetings to the time of his death." Each of them, indeed, was ready to help the other when he could. When the advertisement of Johnson's _Dictionary_ appeared in _The Gentleman's Magazine_, there was printed beneath it a complimentary ode, written by Garrick, and ending with the lines: And Johnson, well arm'd like a hero of yore, Has beat forty French, and will beat forty more![24] When Drury Lane theatre was first opened under the management of Garrick, the prologue (one of the two decent prologues in the language, according to Byron) was written by Johnson. It is a fine appeal to the public to support Garrick in ennobling the stage by the revival of Shakespeare: Ah! let not censure term our fate our choice, The stage but echoes back the public voice; The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give, For we that live to please, must please to live. The truth was, as Sir Joshua Reynolds said: "Johnson considered Garrick to be as it were his _property_. He would allow no man either to blame or to praise Garrick in his presence, without contradicting him." Boswell discovered this, as we have seen, at the famous meeting in Tom Davies's back parlour. Garrick died in 1779 and was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey. His death provoked one of the most famous of all Johnson's sentences: "That stroke of death" he wrote, "has eclipsed the gaiety of nations." [Illustration: DAVID GARRICK] Of his personal character Johnson said even finer things and when Boswell tried to press him, he retired, as usual, defeated: "JOHNSON. 'Garrick was a very good man, the cheerfullest 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 four-pence do as much as others made four-pence halfpenny do. But, when he had got money, he was very liberal....'