iliation, and the
elder Sheridan actually became manager of the theatre of which his son
was part proprietor.

Old Tom Sheridan had always been a proud man, and when once he was
offended, was hard to bring round again. His quarrel with Johnson was an
instance of this. In 1762 the Doctor, hearing they had given Sheridan a
pension of two hundred a year, exclaimed, 'What have they given _him_ a
pension? then it is time for me to give up mine.' A 'kind friend' took
care to repeat the peevish exclamation, without adding what Johnson had
said immediately afterwards, 'However, I am glad that they have given
Mr. Sheridan a pension, for he is a very good man.' The actor was
disgusted; and though Boswell interfered, declined to be reconciled. On
one occasion he even rushed from a house at which he was to dine, when
he heard that the great Samuel had been invited. The Doctor had little
opinion of Sheridan's declamation. 'Besides, sir,' said he, 'what
influence can Mr. Sheridan have upon the language of this great country
by his narrow exertions. Sir, it is burning a farthing candle at Dover
to show light at Calais.' Still, when Garrick attacked his rival,
Johnson nobly defended him. 'No sir,' he said, 'there is to be sure, in
Sheridan, something to reprehend, and everything to laugh at; but, sir,
he is not a bad man. No, sir, were mankind to be divided into good and
bad, he would stand considerably within the ranks of the good.'

However, the greatest bully of his age (and the kindest-hearted man)
thought very differently of the son. Richard Brinsley had written a
prologue to Savage's play of 'Sir Thomas Overbury'--

'Ill-fated Savage, at whose birth was giv'n
No parent but the Muse, no friend but Heav'n;'

and in this had paid an elegant compliment to the great lexicographer,
winding up with these lines:--

'So pleads the tale that gives to future times
The son's misfortunes and the parent's crimes;
There shall his fame, if own'd to-night, survive,
Fix'd _by the hand that bids our language live_--

referring at once to Johnson's life of his friend Savage and to his
great Dictionary. It was Savage, every one remembers, with whom Johnson
in his days of starvation was wont to walk the streets all night,
neither of them being able to pay for a lodging, and with whom, walking
one night round and round St. James's Square, he kept up his own and his
companion's spirits by inveighing against the minister and declaring