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.
Soon afterwards Captain Garrick died, and at the same time died also the rich wine merchant uncle, who left a fair sum of money to his brother's children, with a special legacy to David, of whom he had been particularly fond. Then it was that for the first time the boy's ambition took definite shape: he knew there was only one life and one career for him, and that was summed up in the stage. His mother, though, shrank in horror from the idea, and to his eternal credit, rather than add to her sorrows, he set aside his own wishes, and made one more desperate effort to please his family by going into the wine business, as the London manager, with his brother Peter. Even in so doing, theatrical life pursued him, for his wines were so patronised by the coffee-houses and clubs to which the actors resorted, that he considered it part of his business to amuse and entertain his customers by "standing on the tables at the clubs to give his diverting and loudly applauded mimicries." To make a long story short, the genius that was in David would not allow him to settle down to a wine merchant's career; he became restless and dissatisfied, and one fine morning two letters fell like bombshells into the Garrick household at Lichfield: one from David, saying that his mind was so inclined to the stage that he could no longer resist it, and he hoped they would all forgive him when they found he had the genius of an actor; the other from an old friend, who hastened to assure the family how great a success Davy's first appearance had been, how the audience was in raptures, and how several men of judgment had wondered that he had kept off the stage so long. Richard II. was the ambitious part Garrick had undertaken. "I played the part to the surprise of every one," he wrote humbly to his furious brother. "It is what I doat upon, and I am resolved to pursue it." The _Daily Post_ had an enthusiastic notice about this unknown gentleman who had never appeared before, "whose reception was the most extraordinary and great that was ever known, whose voice was clear, without monotony, drawling, affectation, bellowing, or grumbling; whose mien was neither strutting, slouching, stiff, nor mincing." Pope, most keen of critics, had watched him delightedly from a box. "That young man never had his equal, and never will have a rival," he remarked; adding, "I only fear lest he should become vain and ruined by applause."