GARRICK (312 pp.)Margaret Barton Macmillan ($5).
In 1736 a clever, ugly young man opened a private school in an English village, hoping to support his new wife by drumming Latin into boys' heads. Few came to Samuel Johnson's school; one of those who did was 19-year-old David Garrick, son of a shabby-genteel army captain. Davy was a poor scholar, preferring to do impersonations rather than homework ; he would even listen at the keyhole of the Johnson bedroom and later mimic the schoolmaster's clumsy gallantries. When the school collapsed for lack of students, the...
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