was about doubled. He was very poor when the Life of Savage was
written for Cave. Soon after its publication, we are told, Mr.
Harte dined with Cave, and incidentally praised it. Meeting him
again soon afterwards Cave said to Mr. Harte, "You made a man very
happy t'other day." "How could that be?" asked Harte. "Nobody was
there but ourselves." Cave answered by reminding him that a plate
of victuals was sent behind a screen, which was to Johnson, dressed
so shabbily that he did not choose to appear.

Johnson, struggling, found Savage struggling, and was drawn to him
by faith in the tale he told. We have seen in our own time how even
an Arthur Orton could find sensible and good people to believe the
tale with which he sought to enforce claim upon the Tichborne
baronetcy. Savage had literary skill, and he could personate the
manners of a gentleman in days when there were still gentlemen of
fashion who drank, lied, and swaggered into midnight brawls. I have
no doubt whatever that he was the son of the nurse with whom the
Countess of Macclesfield had placed a child that died, and that
after his mother's death he found the papers upon which he built his
plot to personate the child, extort money from the Countess and her
family, and bring himself into a profitable notoriety.

Johnson's simple truthfulness and ready sympathy made it hard for
him to doubt the story told as Savage told it to him. But when he
told it again himself, though he denounced one whom he believed to
be an unnatural mother, and dealt gently with his friend, he did not
translate evil into good. Through all the generous and kindly
narrative we may see clearly that Savage was an impostor. There is
the heart of Johnson in the noble appeal against judgment of the
self-righteous who have never known the harder trials of the world,