Woodward always found a defender in Garrick. Foote, who abused hospitality by mimicking his host, called Woodward a "contemptible fellow," when he heard that the latter was about to dress Malagene so as to look like Foote. "He cannot be contemptible," said Garrick, "since you are afraid of him in the very line in which you yourself excel." Of course, being naturally a comic actor, Woodward had an affection for tragedy; but it was not in him to utter a serious line with due effect. His scamps were perfect in their cool impudence; his modern fops shone with a brazen impertinence; his fops of an older time glistened with an elegant rascality; his mock heroes were stupendously but suspiciously outrageous; his every-day simpletons, vulgarly stolid; and his Shaksperian light characters brimful and running over with Shaksperian spirit. Graceful of form, his aspect was something serious off the stage, but he no sooner passed the wing than a ripple of funny emotion seemed to roll over his face, and this, combined with a fine stage-voice, never failed to place him and his audience in the happiest sympathetic connection. "Bobadil was his great part, in which he acquired a vast increase of reputation and gave a striking proof of his genius;" but there were two other characters in which Woodward could hardly have been inferior, for it may be gathered from Wilkinson, that in Marplot, he was everything author or audience could wish, and that in Touchstone, he excelled at least all his contemporaries, and had no equal in it till Lewis came. Woodward was at one time a _good man_, in the mercantile view of the phrase, for he was a rich man. Unfortunately, he was induced by Spranger Barry to become partner with him in the Dublin Theatre,--in which venture, Woodward lost all he had saved; and Barry, too, made shipwreck of his fortune. Garrick passed from the stage to years of repose and enjoyment. Barry and Woodward could not quit it till, having had more than enough of labour, Death summoned them to a, perhaps, not unwelcome rest. Little is known of the origin of Edward Shuter. Small trust can be placed in the report that he was the son of a clergyman--not because he himself was, at one time, only a billiard-marker, or that he could with difficulty read his parts, and had much perplexity in even signing his own name; but because Ned himself never boasted of it. What is certain of him is, that he was an actor entirely of the Garrick period, commencing his vocation as Catesby, at Richmond, in 1744, and concluding as Falstaff, to the Prince, in "Henry V.,"[125] of Lewis, played for his own benefit, at Covent Garden, in May 1776.