We owe a great debt to Miss Burney for preserving these memoirs of the poetesses. They bring us back from the first man of letters of the day to that Johnson who sheltered ‘whole nests of people in his house;’ who, when he was asked by a lady why he so constantly gave money to beggars, replied, with great feeling, ‘Madam, to enable them to beg on;’ and who, when he found children asleep at night on bulks in the street, would put a penny in their hands, so that they might be able to get a breakfast in the morning.
His delight in human creatures gave zest to his biographical labours, and his long familiarity with the rudiments of life gave sanity and charity to his judgements. Some of the good qualities which he found in his friend Savage were also in himself, and were perhaps no small part of the bond between them. ‘Compassion,’ he says, ‘was indeed the distinguishing quality of Savage; he never appeared inclined to take advantage of weakness, to attack the defenceless, or to press upon the falling: whoever was distressed was certain at least of his good wishes; and when he could give no assistance to extricate them from misfortunes, he endeavoured to soothe them by sympathy and tenderness.’ Intellectual curiosity must have been as strong a tie. When Savage conversed with those who were conspicuous at that time, ‘he watched their looser moments,’ says his biographer, ‘and examined their domestick behaviour with that acuteness which nature had given him, and which the uncommon variety of his life had contributed to increase, and that inquisitiveness which
