I am, Sir, your most obedient, and most humble servant, SAM. JOHNSON. _At Mr. Osborne's, Bookseller, in Gray's Inn_. In the following year (1744) he produced his Life of Savage, a work that gives the charm of a romance to a narrative of real [**re in original] events; and which, bearing the stamp of that eagerness [**ea ness in original] and rapidity with which it was thrown off the mind of the writer, exhibits rather the fervour of an eloquent advocate, than the laboriousness of a minute biographer. The forty-eight octavo pages, as he told Mr. Nichols [4], were written in one day and night. At its first appearance it was warmly praised, in the Champion, probably either by Fielding, or by Ralph, who succeeded to him in a share of that paper; and Sir Joshua Reynolds, when it came into his hand, found his attention so powerfully arrested, that he read it through without changing his posture, as he perceived by the torpidness of one of his arms that had rested on a chimney-piece by which he was standing. For the Life of Savage [5], he received fifteen guineas from Cave. About this time he fell into the company of Collins, with whom, as he tells us in his life of that poet, he delighted to converse. His next publication (in 1745) was a pamphlet, called "Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with Remarks on Sir T.H. (Sir Thomas Hanmer's) Edition of Shakspeare," to which were subjoined, proposals for a new edition of his plays. These observations were favourably mentioned by Warburton, in the preface to his edition; and Johnson's gratitude for praise bestowed at a time when praise was of value to him, was fervent and lasting. Yet Warburton, with his usual intolerance of any dissent from his opinions, afterwards complained in a private letter [6] to Hurd, that Johnson's remarks on his commentaries were full of insolence and malignant reflections, which, had they not in them "as much folly as malignity," he should have had reason to be offended with. In 1747, he furnished Garrick, who had become joint-patentee and manager of Drury Lane, with a Prologue on the opening of the house. This address has been commended quite as much as it deserves. The characters of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson are, indeed, discriminated with much skill; but surely something might have been said, if not of Massinger and Beaumont and Fletcher, yet at least of Congreve and Otway, who are involved in the sweeping censure passed on "the wits of Charles."