ses to the right and
the left in all respectable men's shops. This temper, with her usual
sagacity, Lady M. Wortley Montagu could detect in Richardson, and for
this she despised him. But this it was, and some little vision of
possible patronage from Lord Tyrconnel, which had obtained any prices at
all for Savage from such knowing publishers as were then arising; but
generally Savage had relied upon subscriptions, which were still common,
and, in his case, as a man supposed unfortunate, were given purely as
charity. With what astonishment does a literary foreigner of any
judgment find a Savage placed amongst the classics of England! and from
the scale of his life reasonably he must infer that he is ranked amongst
the leaders, whilst the extent in which his works are multiplied would
throw him back upon the truth--that he is utterly unknown to his
countrymen. These, however, were the delusions of good nature. But what
are we to think of Dr. Johnson's abetting that monstrous libel against
Lady Macclesfield? She, unhappily, as a woman banished without hope from
all good society by her early misconduct as a wife (but, let it not be
forgotten, a neglected wife), had nobody to speak a word on her behalf:
all evil was believed of one who had violated her marriage vows. But had
the affair occurred in our days, the public journals would have righted
her. They would have shown the folly of believing a vain, conceited man
like Savage and his nurse, with no vouchers whatever, upon a point where
they had the deepest interest at stake; whilst on the opposite side,
supposing their story true, spoke for them the strongest of all natural
instincts--the pleading of the maternal heart, combated by no
self-interest whatever. Surely if Lady Macclesfield had not been
supported by indignation against an imposture, merely for her own ease
and comfort, she would have pensioned Savage, or have procured him some
place under Government--not difficult in those days for a person with
her connections (however sunk as respected _female_ society) to have
obtained for an only son. In the sternness of her resistance to all
attempts upon her purse we read her sense of the fraud. And, on the
other hand, was the conduct of Savage that of a son? He had no legal
claims upon her, consequently no pretence for molesting her in her
dwelling-house. And would a real son--a great lubberly fellow, well able
to work as a porter or a footman--however wounded at her obstin