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.
[506] According to Johnson, she was at Bath when Savage’s poem of The Bastard was published. ‘She could not,’ he wrote, ‘enter the assembly-rooms or cross the walks without being saluted with some lines from The Bastard. This was perhaps the first time that she ever discovered a sense of shame, and on this occasion the power of wit was very conspicuous; the wretch who had without scruple proclaimed herself an adulteress, and who had first endeavoured to starve her son, then to transport him, and afterwards to hang him, was not able to bear the representation of her own conduct; but fled from reproach, though she felt no pain from guilt, and left Bath with the utmost haste to shelter herself among the crowds of London.’ Johnson’s Works, viii. 141.
[507] Miss Mason, after having forfeited the title of Lady Macclesfield by divorce, was married to Colonel Brett, and, it is said, was well known in all the polite circles. Colley Cibber, I am informed, had so high an opinion of her taste and judgement as to genteel life, and manners, that he submitted every scene of his Careless Husband to Mrs. Brett’s revisal and correction. Colonel Brett was reported to be too free in his gallantry with his Lady’s maid. Mrs. Brett came into a room one day in her own house, and found the Colonel and her maid both fast asleep in two chairs. She tied a white handkerchief round her husband’s neck, which was a sufficient proof that she had discovered his intrigue; but she never at any time took notice of it to him. This incident, as I am told, gave occasion to the well-wrought scene of Sir Charles and Lady Easy and Edging. BOSWELL. Lady Macclesfield died 1753, aged above 80. Her eldest daughter, by Col. Brett, was, for the few last months of his life, the mistress of George I, (Walpole’s Reminiscences, cv.) Her marriage ten years after her royal lover’s death is thus announced in the Gent. Mag., 1737:—‘Sept. 17. Sir W. Leman, of Northall, Bart., to Miss Brett [Britt] of Bond Street, an heiress;’ and again next month—‘Oct. 8. Sir William Leman, of Northall, Baronet, to Miss Brett, half sister to Mr. Savage, son to the late Earl Rivers;’ for the difference of date I know not how to account; but the second insertion was, no doubt, made by Savage to countenance his own pretensions. CROKER.
[508] ‘Among the names of subscribers to the Harleian Miscellany there occurs that of “Sarah Johnson, bookseller in Lichfield.”’ Johnsoniana, p. 466.
[509] A brief account of Oldys is given in the Gent. Mag. liv. 161, 260. Like so many of his fellows he was thrown into the Fleet. ‘After poor Oldys’s release, such was his affection for the place that he constantly spent his evenings there.’
[510] In the Feb. number of the Gent. Mag. for this year (p. 112) is the following advertisement:—‘Speedily will be published (price 1s.) Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with remarks on Sir T.H.‘s edition of Shakespear; to which is affix’d proposals for a new edition of Shakespear, with a specimen. Printed for J. Roberts in Warwick Lane.’ In the March number (p. 114), under the date of March 31, it is announced that it will be published on April 6. In spite of the two advertisements, and the titlepage which agrees with the advertisements, I believe that the Proposals were not published till eleven years later (see post, end of 1756). I cannot hear of any copy of the Miscellaneous Observations which contains them. The advertisement is a third time repeated in the April number of the Gent. Mag. for 1745 (p. 224), but the Proposals are not this time mentioned. Tom Davies the bookseller gives 1756 as the date of their publication (Misc. and Fugitive Pieces, ii. 87). Perhaps Johnson or the booksellers were discouraged by Hanmer’s Shakespeare as well as by Warburton’s. Johnson at the end of the Miscellaneous Observations says:—‘After the foregoing pages were printed, the late edition of Shakespeare ascribed to Sir T. H. fell into my hands.’
[511] ‘The excellence of the edition proved to be by no means proportionate to the arrogance of the editor.’ Cambridge Shakespeare, i. xxxiv.
[512] ‘When you see Mr. Johnson pray [give] my compliments, and tell him I esteem him as a great genius—quite lost both to himself and the world.’ Gilbert Walmesley to Garrick, Nov. 3, 1746. Garrick Correspondence, i. 45. Mr. Walmesley’s letter does not shew that Johnson was idle. The old man had expected great things from him. ‘I have great hopes,’ he had written in 1737 (see ante, p. 102), ‘that he will turn out a fine tragedy writer.’ In the nine years in which Johnson had been in town he had done, no doubt, much admirable work; but by his poem of London only was he known to the public. His Life of Savage did not bear his name. His Observations on Macbeth were published in April, 1745; his Plan of the Dictionary in 1747 [Transcriber’s note: Originally 1774, corrected in Errata.]. What was Johnson doing meanwhile? Boswell conjectures that he was engaged on his Shakespeare and his Dictionary. That he went on working at his Shakespeare when the prospect of publishing was so remote that he could not issue his proposals is very unlikely. That he had been for some time engaged on his Dictionary before he addressed Lord Chesterfield is shewn by the opening sentences of the Plan. Mr. Croker’s conjecture that he was absent or concealed on account of some difficulties which had arisen through the rebellion of 1745 is absurd. At no time of his life had he been an ardent Jacobite. ‘I have heard him declare,’ writes Boswell, ‘that if holding up his right hand would have secured victory at Culloden to Prince Charles’s army, he was not sure he would have held it up;’ post, July 14, 1763. ‘He had never in his life been in a nonjuring meeting-house;’ post, June 9, 1784.
For the fact that he wrote very little,