bad, he would stand considerably within the ranks of the good.'

However, the greatest bully of his age (and the kindest-hearted man)
thought very differently of the son. Richard Brinsley had written a
prologue to Savage's play of 'Sir Thomas Overbury'--

'Ill-fated Savage, at whose birth was giv'n
No parent but the Muse, no friend but Heav'n;'

and in this had paid an elegant compliment to the great lexicographer,
winding up with these lines:--

'So pleads the tale that gives to future times
The son's misfortunes and the parent's crimes;
There shall his fame, if own'd to-night, survive,
Fix'd _by the hand that bids our language live_--

referring at once to Johnson's life of his friend Savage and to his
great Dictionary. It was Savage, every one remembers, with whom Johnson
in his days of starvation was wont to walk the streets all night,
neither of them being able to pay for a lodging, and with whom, walking
one night round and round St. James's Square, he kept up his own and his
companion's spirits by inveighing against the minister and declaring
that they would 'stand by their country.'

Doubtless the Doctor felt as much pleasure at the meed awarded to his
old companion in misery as at the high compliment to himself. Anyhow he
pronounced that Sheridan 'had written the two best comedies of his age,'
and therefore proposed him as a member of the Literary Club.