JOHNSON. 21 



speaker" there being no manner exhibited in any of the 

 speeches, except one, and that the peculiar manner of 

 Dr. Johnson. 



During the first five years of his residence in London 

 he appears to have associated more with Savage than 

 with any other person ; and this connection, the result 

 of that unfortunate, but dissipated, and indeed reckless 

 individual's agreeable qualities, was the only part of his 

 life upon which Johnson had any occasion to look back 

 with shame; though, so permanent was the fascination 

 under which he was laid by the talents and the know- 

 ledge of high life which he found, or fancied he found, in 

 his companion, that he never would own his delusion 

 never, perhaps, sufficiently felt the regret he ought to 

 have experienced for the aberration. The idle, listless 

 habits of the man accorded well with his own ; their 

 distresses were nearly equal, though the one seemed 

 degraded from the station he was born to, while the 

 other was only unfortunate in not having yet reached 

 that which he was by his merits entitled to. Irregular 

 habits, impatience of steady industry, unequal animal 

 spirits, a subsistence altogether depending on their own 

 casual exertions and altogether precarious, had these 

 exertions been far more sustained were common to 

 them both. The love of drinking was much more 

 Savage's vice than Johnson's, though, under the influence 

 of his own malady and his friend's example, he soon fell 

 into it, without, however, indulging in so great excesses. 

 But the laxity of the poet's principles, and his profligate 

 habits, made an inroad on the moralist's purity of con- 

 duct, for which his temperament certainly paved the 

 way ; the testimony of his provincial friends to the 



