But Savage discovered, or affected to discover, that he was the missing one, and from that moment made the Countess miserable by his importunities for recognition and money, more particularly for the latter.  “It was to no purpose,” records Dr. Johnson, “that he frequently solicited her to admit him to see her; she avoided him with the most vigilant precaution, and ordered him to be excluded from her house, by whomsoever he might be introduced, and what reason soever he might give for entering it.”  And the Doctor, who had an abiding and very misplaced confidence in the fellow, adds plaintively:  “Savage was at the same time so touched with the discovery of his real mother that it was his frequent practice to walk in the dark evenings for several hours before her door in hopes of seeing her as she might come by accident to the window, or cross her apartment with a candle in her hand.”

“Touched with the discovery,” forsooth!  ’Twas a species of blackmail cloaked in the guise of filial sentiment.

This talented blackguard was wont to pray for alms from Mistress Oldfield; and that dear charitable creature (are not most actresses dear, charitable creatures?) would often waste her practical sympathy upon him.  She despised the man, but, with that generosity so characteristic of her craft, was ever ready to relieve his necessities.[A] Well, well, how the glitter from a few guineas can envelop the fragile doner in a golden light, and throw over her faults the soft glow of forgiveness.

[Footnote A:  In this (Johnson’s) “Life of Savage” ’tis related that Mrs. Oldfield was very fond of Mr. Savage’s conversation, and allowed him an annuity during her life of L50.  These facts are equally ill-grounded; there was no foundation for them.  That Savage’s misfortunes pleaded for pity, and had the desired effect on Mrs. Oldfield’s compassion, is certain; but she so much disliked the man, and disapproved his conduct, that she never admitted him to her conversation, nor suffered him to enter her house.  She indeed often relieved him with such donations as spoke her generous disposition.  But this was on the solicitation of friends, who frequently set his calamities before her in the most piteous light; and, from a principle of humanity, she became not a little instrumental in saving his life.—­CIBBER’S “Lives of the Poets.”]

Savage himself once turned player, and no one must have been more amused thereat than the Oldfield.  It happened during the summer of 1723, when the poet, who was in his customary state of (theatrical) destitution, determined to replenish his shabby purse by bringing out a tragedy.  While this play, “The Tragedy of Sir Thomas Overbury,"[A] was in rehearsal at Drury Lane, Colley Cibber kept the author in clothes, and the Laureate’s son Theophilus, then a very young man, studied the part of Somerset.  The principal actors were not in London just then, it being the off season, when the younger players strutted across