illegitimated by the parliament, and disowned by his mother, doomed to poverty and obscurity, and launched upon Lives of the the ocean of life only that he might be swallowed by its quicksands or dashed upon its rocks.

Johnson's

Poets:

Savage.

In 1885 the west end of Fox Court near Gray's Inn Road was torn down; but nearer Brooke Street were still standing many miserable, wretched tenements, two centuries old, in any one of which the cruel mother might have given life to her unhappy son.

The site of the shoemaker's stall in Holborn, where Savage worked as a youth, is unknown, nor is there any record as to where he lodged or lived.

Savage first met Johnson at Cave's, in St. John's Gate (see JOHNSON, p. 157); and a favorite tavern of his was the Cross Keys, in that neighborhood. It stood on the east side of St. John's Street, opposite the entrance of St. John's Lane, and facing the Gate. A modern Cross Keys Inn at Nos. 16 and 18 St. John's Street has been erected on its site. He frequented the Crown in King Street, Cheapside, which has disappeared, and in 1727 he went to Button's (see ADDISON, p. 6) to receive the seventy guineas which were subscribed by a number of gentlemen for his relief from distress. He is then believed to have been lodging somewhere in Westminster.

Of 'Robinson's Coffee House, near Charing Cross,' in which occurred the unfortunate broil which brought great subsequent trouble to Savage, there is no trace now. Johnson gives the following account of the affair:

--

Merchant, with some rudeness, demanded a room, and was told that there was a good fire in the next parlor, which the company were about to leave, being then paying their reckoning. Merchant, not satisfied with this answer, rushed into the room and was followed by his companions. He then petulantly placed himself between the company and the fire, and soon afterwards

kicked down the table. This produced a quarrel; swords were drawn on both sides, and one, Mr. James Sinclair, was killed. Savage, having likewise wounded a maid that held him, forced his way with Merchant out of the house.

They were committed to the Gate House at Westminster (see BURKE, p. 27), and afterwards to Newgate, and were tried at the Old Bailey. Savage was sentenced to death, but subsequently pardoned. What became of the petulant Mr. Merchant, who was convicted of manslaughter only, is not known.

Savage was familiar with all the disreputable taverns of his day, and was to be seen, too, in some of the more refined resorts. One of his experiences with Steele is thus

described :

Jesse's

Almost adjoining and to the east of Apsley House, formerly stood a noted inn, the Pillars of Hercules. . . . The space between the Pillars of Hercules and Hamilton Place [Hyde Park Corner] was formerly occupied by a row London, of mean houses, one of which was a public house Piccadilly. called the Triumphant Chariot. This was in all probability the 'petty tavern' to which the unfortunate Richard Savage was conducted by Sir Richard Steele, on the occasion of their being closeted together for a whole day composing a hurried pamphlet which they had to sell for two guineas before they could pay for their dinner.

SIR WALTER SCOTT

1771-1832.

SCOTT, on one of his earliest visits to London, in 1803,

wrote to Ballantyne from '15 Piccadilly, West,' the house of Charles Dumergue, surgeon dentist to the Royal Family.

Lockhart's I should not omit to say that Scott was attended on Life of Scott. this trip by a fine bull terrier named Camp.

Piccadilly has been renumbered. The Dumergues lived in the house afterwards No. 96 Piccadilly, corner of Whitehorse Street, which was unchanged in 1885;16 and this was Scott's usual abiding-place in town until his daughter Mrs. Lockhart had a house of her own at No. 24 Sussex Place, fronting Regent's Park, between Hanover Gate and Clarence Gate, to which to invite him.

During the sojourn [in London] of 1809 the homage paid Scott would have turned the head of any less gifted man of eminence. It neither altered his opinions nor produced

Lockhart's

Scott, vol. i. the affectation of despising it; on the contrary, he rechap. xix. ceived it, cultivated it, and repaid it in his own coin.

All this is very flattering,' he would say, 'and very civil; and if people are amused with hearing me tell a parcel of old stories, or recite a pack of ballads to lovely young girls and gaping matrons, they are easily pleased, and a man would be very ill-natured who would not give pleasure so cheaply conferred.'

In 1826 Scott was lodging at No. 25 Pall Mall, when he wrote in his Diary: :

Lockhart's Scott, vol. ii. chap. xxxvi.

Oct. 17. Here I am in this capital once more, after an April meeting with my daughter and Lockhart. Too much grief in our first meeting to be joyful, too much pleasure to be distressing; a giddy sensation between the painful and the pleasurable. . . . Oct. 23. — Sam Rogers and Moore breakfasted here, and we were very merry fellows.

This house, on the north side of Pall Mall, between John Street and Waterloo Place, has been rebuilt.

Scott, in his occasional visits to London, was to be found in all the best houses and in the most enjoyable society. He breakfasted with Rogers in St. James's Place (see ROGERS, p. 258), frequented the shop of Mr. Murray, No. 50