to put the best face upon faults, which he has too much love of truth to conceal.  The explanation is, partly, that Johnson conceived himself to be avenging a victim of cruel oppression.  “This mother,” he says, after recording her vindictiveness, “is still alive, and may perhaps even yet, though her malice was often defeated, enjoy the pleasure of reflecting that the life, which she often endeavoured to destroy, was at last shortened by her maternal offices; that though she could not transport her son to the plantations, bury him in the shop of a mechanic, or hasten the hand of the public executioner, she has yet had the satisfaction of embittering all his hours, and forcing him into exigencies that hurried on his death.”

But it is also probable that Savage had a strong influence upon Johnson’s mind at a very impressible part of his career.  The young man, still ignorant of life and full of reverent enthusiasm for the literary magnates of his time, was impressed by the varied experience of his companion, and, it may be, flattered by his intimacy.  Savage, he says admiringly, had enjoyed great opportunities of seeing the most conspicuous men of the day in their private life.  He was shrewd and inquisitive enough to use his opportunities well.  “More circumstances to constitute a critic on human life could not easily concur.”  The only phrase which survives to justify this remark is Savage’s statement about Walpole, that “the whole range of his mind was from obscenity to politics, and from politics to obscenity.”  We may, however, guess what was the special charm of the intercourse to Johnson.  Savage was an expert in that science of human nature, learnt from experience not from books, upon which Johnson set so high a value, and of which he was destined to become the authorized expositor.  There were, moreover, resemblances between the two men.  They were both admired and sought out for their conversational powers.  Savage, indeed, seems to have lived chiefly by the people who entertained him for talk, till he had disgusted them by his insolence and his utter disregard of time and propriety.  He would, like Johnson, sit up talking beyond midnight, and next day decline to rise till dinner-time, though his favourite drink was not, like Johnson’s, free from intoxicating properties.  Both of them had a lofty pride, which Johnson heartily commends in Savage, though he has difficulty in palliating some of its manifestations.  One of the stories reminds us of an anecdote already related of Johnson himself.  Some clothes had been left for Savage at a coffee-house by a person who, out of delicacy, concealed his name.  Savage, however, resented some want of ceremony, and refused to enter the house again till the clothes had been removed.