great was the spell of his charm and his influence. He was born in an inn at Hereford in the year 1716, the son of a penniless officer in the dragoons, who had married Miss Isabella Clough, the equally penniless daughter of the vicar-choral of Lichfield Cathedral. The lieutenant had to serve at Gibraltar, and little David, a bright lad, ever ready with a witty answer, got his early education in a free school at Lichfield, presided over by a master who used the rod freely, "to save his boys from the gallows," as he assured them for their comfort. An older boy at the same school was Samuel Johnson, the son of a highly respected bookseller in Lichfield. In spite of the great difference in their ages, he became David’s friend, and together they used to patronise such plays as the companies of strolling players brought within their reach, the acting taking place in such barns as were available. David, full of enterprise, organised and drilled a little company of his own when he was barely eleven, which company performed a play called "The Recruiting Officer," to the admiration of a large and interested audience, composed mainly of parents. But funds did not allow of many such pastimes, and a year later David was sent out to Portugal to work in the office of an uncle, a prosperous wine merchant there. Never was boy more unfit for the daily routine of an office, a fact which, fortunately, his uncle soon recognised, for in a few months he was back again in Lichfield, slightly in disgrace, it is true, and was sent to his old school that "discipline might repair his deficiencies." [Illustration: DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.] Young Johnson, who by now had returned from Oxford, had, thanks to the assistance of a wealthy friend, Mr. Walmesley, set up a school of his own in the town, dignified by the name of "The Academy." At this seat of learning Garrick studied for a while, and years afterwards he wrote of his solemn ponderous master, "I honoured him, he endured me." But the academy did not prosper, and Johnson, who had already begun to write, determined to try his fate in London. Thither, too, young Garrick was bent, for it had been decided that he was to study law, and kind Mr. Walmesley had arranged to pay the expenses of the special instruction he would need, declaring him to be "of a good disposition, and as ingenious and promising a young man as ever I knew in my life." So together they set out, and together they lived for awhile, Johnson finding a scanty livelihood as a bookseller’s assistant, David working as a student of Lincoln’s Inn.