James Boswell - THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON - All 6 Volumes in One Edition

[486] In his old age he wrote as he had written in the vigour of his manhood:—‘To the censure of Collier … he [Dryden] makes little reply; being at the age of sixty-eight attentive to better things than the claps of a playhouse.’ Johnson’s Works vii. 295. See post , April 29, 1773, and Sept. 21, 1777.

[487] Johnson, writing of the latter half of the seventeenth century, says:—‘The playhouse was abhorred by the Puritans, and avoided by those who desired the character of seriousness or decency. A grave lawyer would have debased his dignity, and a young trader would have impaired his credit, by appearing in those mansions of dissolute licentiousness.’ Johnson’s Works , vii. 270. The following lines in Churchill’s Apology ( Poems , i. 65), published in 1761, shew how strong, even at that time, was the feeling against strolling players:—

‘The strolling tribe, a despicable race,

Like wand’ring Arabs shift from place to place.

Vagrants by law, to Justice open laid,

They tremble, of the beadle’s lash afraid,

And fawning cringe, for wretched means of life,

To Madam May’ress, or his Worship’s Wife.’

[488] Johnson himself recognises the change in the public estimation:—‘In Dryden’s time,’ he writes, ‘the drama was very far from that universal approbation which it has now obtained.’ Works , vii. 270.

[489] Giffard was the manager of the theatre in Goodman’s Fields, where Garrick, on Oct. 19, 1741, made his first appearance before a London audience. Murphy’s Garrick , pp. 13, 16.

[490] ‘Colonel Pennington said, Garrick sometimes failed in emphasis; as, for instance, in Hamlet,

“I will speak daggers to her; but use none ;”

instead of

“I will speak daggers to her; but use none.”’

Boswell’s Hebrides , Aug. 28, 1773.

[491] I suspect Dr. Taylor was inaccurate in this statement. The emphasis should be equally upon shalt and not , as both concur to form the negative injunction; and false witness , like the other acts prohibited in the Decalogue, should not be marked by any peculiar emphasis, but only be distinctly enunciated. BOSWELL.

[492] This character of the Life of Savage was not written by Fielding as has been supposed, but most probably by Ralph, who, as appears from the minutes of the partners of The Champion , in the possession of Mr. Reed of Staple Inn, succeeded Fielding in his share of the paper, before the date of that eulogium. BOSWELL. Ralph is mentioned in The Dunciad , iii. 165. A curious account of him is given in Benjamin Franklin’s Memoirs , i. 54-87 and 245.

[493] The late Francis Cockayne Cust, Esq., one of his Majesty’s Counsel. BOSWELL.

[494] Savage’s veracity was questioned, but with little reason; his accounts, though not indeed always the same, were generally consistent. ‘When he loved any man, he suppressed all his faults: and, when he had been offended by him, concealed all his virtues: but his characters were generally true so far as he proceeded; though it cannot be denied that his partiality might have sometimes the effect of falsehood.’ Johnson’s Works , viii. 190.

[496] Johnson’s Works , viii. 98.

[497] The story on which Mr. Cust so much relies, that Savage was a supposititious child, not the son of Lord Rivers and Lady Macclesfield, but the offspring of a shoemaker, introduced in consequence of her real son’s death, was, without doubt, grounded on the circumstance of Lady Macclesfield having, in 1696, previously to the birth of Savage, had a daughter by the Earl Rivers, who died in her infancy; a fact which was proved in the course of the proceedings on Lord Macclesfield’s Bill of Divorce. Most fictions of this kind have some admixture of truth in them. MALONE. From The Earl of Macclesfield’s Case , it appears that ‘Anne, Countess of Macclesfield, under the name of Madam Smith, in Fox Court, near Brook Street, Holborn, was delivered of a male child on the 16th of January, 1696-7, who was baptized on the Monday following, the 18th, and registered by the name of Richard, the son of John Smith, by Mr. Burbridge; and, from the privacy, was supposed by Mr. Burbridge to be “a by-blow or bastard.”’ It also appears, that during her delivery, the lady wore a mask; and that Mary Pegler, on the next day after the baptism, took a male child, whose mother was called Madam Smith, from the house of Mrs. Pheasant, in Fox Court [running from Brook Street in Gray’s Inn Lane], who went by the name of Mrs. Lee.

Conformable to this statement is the entry in the register of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, which is as follows, and which unquestionably records the baptism of Richard Savage, to whom Lord Rivers gave his own Christian name, prefixed to the assumed surname of his mother:—‘Jan. 1696-7. Richard, son of John Smith and Mary, in Fox Court, in Gray’s Inn Lane, baptized the 18th.’ BINDLEY. According to Johnson’s account Savage did not learn who his parents were till the death of his nurse, who had always treated him as her son. Among her papers he found some letters written by Lady Macclesfield’s mother proving his origin. Johnson’s Works , viii. 102. Why these letters were not laid before the public is not stated. Johnson was one of the least credulous of men, and he was convinced by Savage’s story. Horace Walpole, too, does not seem to have doubted it. Walpole’s Letters , i. cv.

[498] Johnson’s Works , viii. 97.

[499] Ib . p. 142.

[500] Johnson’s Works , p. 101.

[501] According to Johnson’s account (Johnson’s Works , viii. 102), the shoemaker under whom Savage was placed on trial as an apprentice was not the husband of his nurse.

[502] He was in his tenth year when she died. ‘He had none to prosecute his claim, to shelter him from oppression, or call in law to the assistance of justice.’ Ib . p. 99.

[503] Johnson’s companion appears to have persuaded that lofty-minded man, that he resembled him in having a noble pride; for Johnson, after painting in strong colours the quarrel between Lord Tyrconnel and Savage, asserts that ‘the spirit of Mr. Savage, indeed, never suffered him to solicit a reconciliation: he returned reproach for reproach, and insult for insult.’ [ Ib . p. 141.] But the respectable gentleman to whom I have alluded, has in his possession a letter, from Savage, after Lord Tyrconnel had discarded him, addressed to the Reverend Mr. Gilbert, his Lordship’s Chaplain, in which he requests him, in the humblest manner, to represent his case to the Viscount. BOSWELL.

[504] ‘How loved, how honoured once avails thee not, To whom related, or by whom begot.’

POPE’S Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady .

[505] Trusting to Savage’s information, Johnson represents this unhappy man’s being received as a companion by Lord Tyrconnel, and pensioned by his Lordship, as if posteriour to Savage’s conviction and pardon. But I am assured, that Savage had received the voluntary bounty of Lord Tyrconnel, and had been dismissed by him, long before the murder was committed, and that his Lordship was very instrumental in procuring Savage’s pardon, by his intercession with the Queen, through Lady Hertford. If, therefore, he had been desirous of preventing the publication by Savage, he would have left him to his fate. Indeed I must observe, that although Johnson mentions that Lord Tyrconnel’s patronage of Savage was ‘upon his promise to lay aside his design of exposing the cruelty of his mother,’ [Johnson’s Works , viii. 124], the great biographer has forgotten that he himself has mentioned, that Savage’s story had been told several years before in The Plain Dealer ; from which he quotes this strong saying of the generous Sir Richard Steele, that ‘the inhumanity of his mother had given him a right to find every good man his father.’ [ Ib . p. 104.] At the same time it must be acknowledged, that Lady Macclesfield and her relations might still wish that her story should not be brought into more conspicuous notice by the satirical pen of Savage. BOSWELL.