of fuch friends as he could make, or the patronage of fome individual that had power or influence, and who might have the kindness to take him by the hand, and lift him into notice. With all that afperity of manners with which he has been charged, and which kept at a distance many, who, to my knowledge, would have been glad of an intimacy with him, he poffeffed the affections of pity and compaflion in a most eminent degree. In a mixed company, of which I was one, the conversation turned on the peftilence which raged in London, in the year 1665, and gave occasion to Johnfon to speak of Dr. Nathanael Hodges, who, in the height of that calamity, continued in the city, and was almost the only one of his profeffion that had the courage to oppose the endeavours of his art to the spreading of the contagion. It was the hard fate of this perfon, a fhort time after, to die a prifoner for debt, in Ludgate: Johnson related this circumstance to us, with the tears ready to start from his eyes; and, with great energy, faid, 'Such a man would not have been fuffered 'to perish in these times.'

It leems by the event of this first expedition, that Johnson came to London for little elfe than to look about him: it afforded him no opportunity of forming connections, either valuable in themselves, or available to any future purpose of his life. Mr. Pope had feen and commended his tranflation of the Meffiah; but Johnson had not the means of accefs to him; and, being a stranger to his person, his spirit would not permit him to folicit fo great a favour from one, who must be fuppofed to have been troubled with fuch kind of applications. With one perfon, however, he commenced an intimacy, the motives to which, at first

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 Johnton, 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 Johnson; which, if in no other refpect 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 defcribes a mind, in which, as in a neglected garden, weeds, without the least obstruction, 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 ftranger to humility, gratitude, and those other virtues that tend to conciliate the affections of men, and infure the continuance of friendship.

It may be conjectured that Johnfon 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 accustomed 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 d:played as much grace as thofe actions were capable of; and that he understood the exercife of a gentle

man's

man's weapon, may be inferred from the ufe he made of it in that rafh encounter which is related in his life, and to which his greatest misfortunes were owing. Thefe accomplishments, and the eafe and pleasantry 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 historian, 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 loose 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 sentiments: 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 thofe 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 hofpitable 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

E3

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

Of the refult of their converfations little can now be known, fave, that they gave rife to those principles of patriotifin, that both, for fome years after, avowed; they both with the fame eye faw, or believed they saw, that the then minifter meditated the ruin of this country; that excife laws, ftanding armies, and penal ftatutes, were the means by which he meant to effect it; and, at the rifque of their liberty, they were bent to oppofe his meafures; but Savage's fpirit was broken by the fenfe 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.

pro

The character and manners of Savage were fuch, as leave us little room to think, that Johnfon could fit by his converfation: whatever were his parts and accomplishments, he had no reading, and could furnifh no intelligence to fuch a mind as Johnfon's: his vagrant courfe of life had made him acquainted with the town and its vices; and though I am not warranted to fay, that Johnfon was infected with them, I have reafon to think, that he reflected with as little approbation on the hours he fpent 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 muft attribute the afcendant which he maintained over the affections of Johnfon,

Johnson, and the inability of the latter to pursue 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 ufage, he was determined to have recourse 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 fubject 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.'

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, she 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