moral rectitude. His first prayer was composed in the year 1738. He had
not, at that time, renounced the use of wine; and, no doubt,
occasionally enjoyed his friend and his bottle. The love of late hours,
which followed him through life, was, perhaps, originally contracted in
company with Savage. However that may be, their connexion was not of
long duration. In the year 1738, Savage was reduced to the last
distress. Mr. Pope, in a letter to him, expressed his concern for "the
miserable withdrawing of his pension after the death of the queen;" and
gave him hopes that, "in a short time, he should find himself supplied
with a competence, without any dependance on those little creatures,
whom we are pleased to call the great." The scheme proposed to him was,
that he should retire to Swansea in Wales, and receive an allowance of
fifty pounds a year, to be raised by subscription: Pope was to pay
twenty pounds. This plan, though finally established, took more than a
year before it was carried into execution. In the mean time, the
intended retreat of Savage called to Johnson's mind the third satire of
Juvenal, in which that poet takes leave of a friend, who was withdrawing
himself from all the vices of Rome. Struck with this idea, he wrote that
well-known poem, called London. The first lines manifestly point to
Savage.

"Though grief and fondness in my breast rebel,
When injur'd Thales bids the town farewell;
Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend;
I praise the hermit, but regret the friend:
Resolv'd, at length, from vice and London far,
To breathe, in distant fields, a purer air;
And, fix'd on Cambria's solitary shore,
Give to St. David one true Briton more."