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view, may probably feem harder to be accounted for, than any one particular in his life. This perfon was Mr. Richard Savage, whofe misfortunes, together with his vices, had driven him to St. John's gate, and thereby introduced him to the acquaintance of Johnfon, which, founded on his part in compaffion, foon improved into friendship and a mutual communication of fentiments and counfels. The hiftory of this man is well known by the life of him written by Johnfon; which, if in no other respect valuable, is curious, in that it gives to view a character felf-formed, as owing nothing to parental nurture, and scarce any thing to moral tuition, and describes a mind, in which, as in a neglected garden, weeds, without the leaft obftruction, were fuffered to grow into luxuriance: nature had endowed him with fine parts, and thofe he cultivated as well as he was able; but his mind had received no moral culture, and for want thereof, we find him to have been a stranger to humility, gratitude, and those other virtues that tend to conciliate the affections of men, and insure the continuance of friendship.

It may be conjectured that Johnson was captivated by the addrefs and demeanour of Savage, at his first approach; for it must be noted of him, that, though he was always an admirer of genteel manners, he at this time had not been accuftomed to the converfation of gentlemen; and Savage, as to his exterior, was, to a remarkable degree, accomplished: he was a handfome, well-made man, and very courteous in the modes of falutation. I have been told, that in the taking off his hat and difpofing it under his arm, and in his bow, he difplayed as much grace as thofe actions were capable of; and that he understood the exercise of a gentle

man's

man's weapon, may be inferred from the ufe he made of it in that rash encounter which is related in his life, and to which his greatest misfortunes were owing. These accomplishments, and the eafe and pleafantry of his conversation, were, probably, the charms that wrought on Johnson, and hid from his view thofe bafer qualities of Savage, with which, as his hiftorian, he has nevertheless been neceffitated to mark his character. The fimilarity of their circumftances might. farther conduce to beget an unreferved confidence in each other; they had both felt the pangs of poverty, and the want of patronage: Savage had let loofe his refentment against the poffeffors of wealth, in a collection of poems printed about the year 1727, and Johnson was ripe for an avowal of the fame fentiments: they feemed both to agree in the vulgar opinion, that the world is divided into two claffes, of men of merit without riches, and men of wealth without merit; never confidering the poffibility that both might concenter in the fame perfon, juft as when, in the comparison of women, we fay, that virtue is of more value than beauty, we forget that many are poffeffed of both.

In fpeculations of this kind, and a mutual condolence of their fortunes, they paffed many a melancholy hour, and those at a time when, it might be fuppofed, the reflection on them had made repofe defirable: on the contrary, that very reflection is known to have interrupted it. Johnson has told me, that whole nights have been spent by him and Savage in converfations of this kind, not under the hospitable roof of a tavern, where warmth might have invigorated their spirits, and wine difpelled their care; but in a perambulation round the fquares of Westminster, St. James's in particular

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particular, when all the money they could both raise was less than fufficient to purchase for them the shelter and fordid comforts of a night cellar.

Of the refult of their conversations little can now be known, fave, that they gave rife to those principles of patriotism, that both, for fome years after, avowed; they both with the fame eye faw, or believed they faw, that the then minifter meditated the ruin of this country; that excife laws, ftanding armies, and penal statutes, were the means by which he meant to effect it; and, at the rifque of their liberty, they were bent to oppose his measures; but Savage's fpirit was broken by the fense of his indigence, and the preffure of those misfortunes which his imprudence had brought on him, and Johnson was left alone to maintain the contest.

The character and manners of Savage were such, as leave us little room to think, that Johnfon could profit by his conversation: whatever were his parts and accomplishments, he had no reading, and could furnish no intelligence to fuch a mind as Johnfon's: his vagrant course of life had made him acquainted with the town and its vices; and though I am not warranted to fay, that Johnson was infected with them, I have reason to think, that he reflected with as little approbation on the hours he spent with Savage as on any period of his life.

Doubtless there is in the example and converfation of fome men a power that fafcinates, and fufpends the operation of our own will to this power in Savage, which confifted in the gentleness of his manners, the elegance of his difcourfe, and the vivacity of his imagination, we must attribute the afcendant which he maintained over the affections of Johnson,

Johnson, and the inability of the latter to purfue the fuggeftions of his own fuperior understanding. To the purpose of this fentiment, I am tempted to relate a fact which Mr. Garrick once communicated to me in converfation, who, fpeaking of the irrefiftible charm of engaging manners, told me, that being an actor at Drury-lane theatre, under Mr. Fleetwood, the patentee thereof, whofe extravagances rendered him incapable of fulfilling his engagements, his falary became deeply in arrear, and he began to feel the want of money : in answer to his many applications for payment, he had obtained promises, and even oaths; but these had been fo often broken, that, preffed by neceffity, and provoked by ill usage, he was determined to have recourfe to law for payment: he however thought it but right to declare his intention; and, for that purpose, invited himself to breakfast with Fleetwood. 'It was on a Sunday,' faid Mr. Garrick, that he appointed to fee me; he received me with great courtesy and affability, and entertained me for fome hours with difcourfe, foreign to the subject of our meeting, but fo bewitching in its kind, that it deprived me of the power of telling him that he owed me fix hundred 'pounds, and that my neceffities compelled me to de'mand it.'

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The intimacy between Savage and Johnson continued till the beginning of the year 1738, when the diftreffes of the former, and the ceffation, by the death of Queen Caroline, of a penfion, which, for fome years, fhe had directed to be paid him, moved fome. of his friends to a fubfcription for his fupport, in a place fo far diftant from the metropolis, as to be out of the reach of its temptations; where he might beget

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new habits, and indulge himself in thofe exercises of his imagination, which had been the employment of his happiest hours. The place fixed on for his refidence was Swansea in Wales; but as it was fome time before the fubfcription could be completed, his retirement thither was retarded.

In this fufpenfe of Savage's fortunes, Johnson feems to have confirmed himself in a refolution of quarrelling with the adminiftration of public affairs, and becoming a fatirift on the manners of the times; and because he thought he faw a resemblance between his own and thofe of Rome in its decline, he chofe to exprefs his fenfe of modern depravity by an imitation of the third fatire of Juvenal, in which, with great judgment, and no less afperity, he drew a parallel between the corruptions of each, and exemplified it by characters, then fubfifting. In it he anticipated the departure of his friend Thales, i. e. Savage, whom he defcribes

as

refolv'd, from vice and London far,
To breathe, in diftant fields, a purer air;
< And, fix'd in Cambria's folitary shore,

Give to St. David one true Briton more.'

To this exercife of his talent he was, probably, excited by the fuccefs of Mr. Pope, who had done the fame by fome of the fatires of Horace, and had vindicated, by the example of Dr. Donne a divine, that fpecies of writing, even in Chriftian times, from the imputation of malevolence and the want of that charity which is not eafily provoked, and endureth all things.'

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