All this offered material for a pathetic story, and Johnson made the most of it in his _Life of Savage_--afterward incorporated in his _Lives of the Poets_, but first published in 1744, about seven years after his coming to London. The book appeared anonymously; but its qualities gave it great vogue; and its essential averments formed the basis of all biographic and encyclopædic[23] notices for nearly a century thereafter. {94} But was the story true? There were those who doubted at the time, and had an unpleasant sense that Johnson had been wheedled by an adventurer; but demonstration of the imposture of Savage did not come till the middle of the present century. The investigations of Moy Thomas[24] would go to show that the Savage friend of Johnson's early days in London was the most arrant of impostors; and that of all the shame that rests upon him, he can only justly be relieved of that which counts him a child of such a woman as the Countess of Macclesfield. I have dwelt upon the Savage episode, not alone because it provoked one of Johnson's best pieces of prose work, but because it shows how open were his sympathies to such tales of distress, and how quick he was to lift the rod of chastisement upon wrong-doers of whatever degree. In _London_, too, that imitative classic poem, there shone in a glitter of couplets (which provoked Pope's praises) the same righteous indignation, and the stings--pricking through all his big {95} Staffordshire bulk--of supperless-days and of shortened means:-- "By numbers here from shame or censure free All crimes are safe, but hated Poverty; This, only this, the rigid Law pursues, This, only this, provokes the snarling muse. "The sober trader at a tattered cloak Wakes from his dream, and labors for a joke; With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways." Better than this was that poem (_Vanity of Human Wishes_) in which, even now, some of us--admiringly-- "In full flown dignity see Wolsey stand, Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand." And the couplet leads on through Wolsey's story to the poet's coupleted sermon, with its savors of a church-bell-- "Still raise for good the supplicating voice, But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice. Safe in his power whose eye discerns afar The secret ambush of a specious prayer; Implore his aid, in his decisions rest, Secure whate'er he gives, he gives the best. * * * * * {96} Pour forth thy fervors for a healthful mind, Obedient passions, and a will resigned; * * * * * For faith, that, panting for a happier seat, Counts death kind nature's signal of retreat." We must note also that famous Prologue, spoken at Drury Lane in 1747, when the theatre came first under control of his old friend, Garrick. Never had the stage, before nor since, a nobler summons in worthier verse: it closes--