as at this time so touched with the discovery of his birth, that he frequently made it his practice to walk before his mother's door in hopes of seeing her by accident; and often did he warmly solicit her to admit him to see her: but all to no purpose; he could neither soften her heart, nor open her hand.

Mean time, while he was assiduously endeavouring to rouse the affections of a mother in whom all natural affection was extinct, he was destitute of the means of support, and reduced to the miseries of want. We are not told by what means he got rid of his obligation. gation to the shoemaker, or whether he ever was actually bound to him; but we now find him very differently employed in order to procure a subsistence. In short, the youth had parts, and a strong inclination towards literary pursuits, especially poetry. He wrote a poem; and afterwards two plays, Woman's Riddle and Love in a Veil; but the author was allowed no part of the profits from the first; and from the second he received no other advantage than the acquaintance of Sir Richard Steele and Mr Wilks, by whom he was pitied, cared for, and relieved. However, the kindness of his friends not affording him a constant supply, he wrote the tragedy of Sir Thomas Overbury; which not only procured him the esteem of many persons of wit, but brought him in 200l. The celebrated Aaron Hill, Esq., was of great service to him in correcting and fitting this piece for the stage and the press; and extended his patronage still farther. But Savage was, like many other wits, a bad manager, and was ever in distress. As fast as his friends raised him out of one difficulty, he sunk into another; and, when he found himself greatly involved, he would ramble about like a vagabond, with scarce a shilling on his back. He was in one of these situations all the time wherein he wrote his tragedy abovementioned; without a lodging, and often without a dinner: so that he used to scribble on scraps of paper picked up by accident, or begged in the shops, which he occasionally stepped into, as thoughts occurred to him, craving the favour of pen and ink, as it were just to take a memorandum.

Mr Hill also earnestly promoted a subscription to a volume of Miscellanies, by Savage; and likewise furnished part of the poems of which the volume was composed. To this miscellany Savage wrote a preface, in which he gives an account of his mother's cruelty, in a very uncommon strain of humour.

The profits of his Tragedy and his Miscellanies together, had now, for a time, somewhat raised poor Savage both in circumstances and credit; so that the world just began to behold him with a more favourable eye than formerly, when both his fame and life were endangered by a most unhappy event. A drunken frolic in which he one night engaged, ended in a fray, and Savage unfortunately killed a man, for which he was condemned to be hanged; his friends earnestly solicited the mercy of the crown, while his mother as earnestly exerted herself to prevent his receiving it. The councils of Hertford at length laid his whole case before queen Caroline, and Savage obtained a pardon.

Savage had now lost that tenderness for his mother, which the whole series of her cruelty had not been able wholly to remove; and considering her as an implacable enemy, whom nothing but his blood could satisfy, threatened to harass her with lampoons, and to publish a copious narrative of her conduct, unless she consented to allow him a pension. This expedient proved successful; and the lord Tyrconnel, upon his promise of laying aside his design of exposing his mother's cruelty, took him into his family, treated him as an equal, and engaged to allow him a pension of 200l. a-year. This was the golden part of Savage's life. He was courted by all who endeavoured to be thought men of genius, and cared for by all who valued themselves upon a refined taste. In this gay period of his life he published the Temple of Health and Mirth, on the recovery of lady Tyrconnel from a languishing illness; and The Wanderer, a moral poem, which he dedicated to lord Tyrconnel, in strains of the highest panegyric; but these praises he in a short time found himself inclined to retract, being discarded by the man on whom they were bestowed. Of this quarrel lord Tyrconnel and Mr Savage affigned very different reasons. Our author's known character pleads too strongly against him; for his conduct was ever such as made all his friends, sooner or later, grow weary of him, and even forced most of them to become his enemies.

Being thus once more turned adrift upon the world, Savage, whose passions were very strong, and whose gratitude was very small, became extremely diligent in exposing the faults of lord Tyrconnel. He, moreover, now thought himself at liberty to take revenge upon his mother.—Accordingly he wrote The Bastard, a poem, remarkable for the vivacity in the beginning, (where he finely enumerates the imaginary advantages of base birth), and for the pathetic conclusion, wherein he recounts the real calamities which he suffered by the crime of his parents.—The reader will not be displeased with a transcript of some of the lines in the opening of the poem, as a specimen of this writer's spirit and manner of versification.

Blest be the bastard's birth! thro' wonderous ways, He shines eccentric like a comet's blaze. No sickly fruit of faint compliance he; He! flam'd in nature's mint with ecstasy! He lives to build, not boast a gen'rous race; No tenth transmitter of a foolish face. He, kindling from within, requires no flame, He glories in a bastard's glowing name. —Nature's unbounded son, he stands alone, His heart unblush'd, and his mind his own. —O mother! yet no mother!—tis to you My thanks for such distinguis'd claims are due.

This poem had an extraordinary sale; and its appearance happening at the time when his mother was at Bath, many persons there took frequent opportunities of repeating passages from the Bastard in her hearing. This was perhaps the first time that ever she discovered a sense of shame, and on this occasion the power of wit was very conspicuous: the wretch who had, without scruple, proclaimed herself an adulteress, and who had first endeavoured to starve her son, then to transport him, and afterwards to hang him, was not able to bear the representation of her own conduct; but fled from reproach, though she felt no pain from guilt; and left Bath with the utmost haste, to shelter herself among the crowds of London.

Some time after this, Savage formed the resolution of applying to the queen; who having once given him life, he hoped she might farther extend her goodness to him by enabling him to support it.—With this view, he published a poem on her birth-day, which he entitled The Volunteer-Laureate; for which she was pleased to send him 50l. with an intimation that he might annually expect the same bounty. But this annual allowance was nothing to a man of his strange and singular extravagance. His usual custom was, as soon as he had received his pension, to disappear with it, and secrete himself from his most intimate friends, till every shilling of the 50l. was spent; which done, he again appeared, penniless as before: But he would never inform any person where he had been, nor in what manner his money had been dissipated.—From the reports, however, of some who found means to penetrate his haunts, it would seem that he expended both his time and his cash in the most forlorn and despicable seculinity; particularly in eating and drinking, in which he would indulge in the most unseemly manner, fitting whole days and nights by himself, in obscure houses of entertainment, over his bottle and trencher, immersed in filth and sloth, with scarce decent apparel; generally wrapped up in a horseman's great coat; and, on the whole, with his very homely countenance, and altogether, exhibiting an object the most disgusting to the sight, if not to some other of the senses.

His wit and parts, however, still raised him new friends, as fast as his misbehaviour lost him his old ones. Yet such was his conduct, that occasional relief only furnished the means of occasional excess; and he defeated all attempts made by his friends to fix him in a decent way. He was even reduced so low as to be destitute of a lodging; inasmuch that he often passed his nights in those mean houses that are let open for casual wanderers; sometimes in cellars amidst the riot and filth of the most profligate of the rabble; and not seldom would he walk the streets till he was weary, and then lie down, in summer, on a bulk, or, in winter, with his associates among the ashes of a glass-house.

Yet, amidst all his penury and wretchedness, had this man so much pride, and so high an opinion of his own merit, that he ever kept up his spirits, and was always ready to repel, with scorn and contempt, the least appearance of any slight or indignity towards himself, in the behaviour of his acquaintance; among whom he looked upon none as his superior. He would be treated as an equal, even by persons of the highest rank. We have an instance of this preposterous and inconsistent pride, in refusing to wait upon a gentleman who was desirous of relieving him when at the lowest ebb of distress, only because the message signified the gentleman's desire to see him at nine in the morning. Savage could not bear that any one should presume to prescribe the hour of his attendance, and therefore he absolutely rejected the proffered kindness. This life, unhappy as it may be already imagined, was yet rendered more unhappy, by the death of the queen, in 1738; which stroke deprived him of all hopes from the court. His pension was discontinued, and the insolent manner in which he demanded of Sir Robert Walpole to have it restored, for ever cut off this considerable supply; which possibly had been only delayed, and might have been recovered by proper application.

His distress now became so great, and so notorious, that a scheme was at length concerted for procuring him a permanent relief. It was proposed that he should retire into Wales, with an allowance of £50 per annum, on which he was to live privately, in a cheap place, for ever quitting his town-haunts, and resigning all farther pretensions to fame. This offer he seemed gladly to accept; but his intentions were only to deceive his friends, by retiring for a while, to write another tragedy, and then to return with it to London in order to bring it upon the stage.

In 1739, he set out for Swansea, in the Bristol stage-coach, and was furnished with 15 guineas to bear the expense of his journey. But, on the 14th day after his departure, his friends and benefactors, the principal of whom was no other than the great Mr Pope, who expected to hear of his arrival in Wales, were surprised with a letter from Savage, informing them that he was yet upon the road, and could not proceed for want of money. There was no other remedy than a remittance; which was sent him, and by the help of which he was enabled to reach Bristol, from whence he was to proceed to Swansea by water. At Bristol, however, he found an embargo laid upon the shipping; so that he could not immediately obtain a passage. Here, therefore, being obliged to stay for some time, he, with his usual facility, so ingratiated himself with the principal inhabitants, that he was frequently invited to their houses, distinguished at their public entertainments, and treated with a regard that highly gratified his vanity, and therefore easily engaged his affections. At length, with great reluctance, he proceeded to Swansea; where he lived about a year, very much dissatisfied with the diminution of his salary; for he had, in his letters, treated his contributors so insolently, that most of them withdrew their subscriptions. Here he finished his tragedy, and resolved to return with it to London: which was strenuously opposed by his great and constant friend Mr Pope; who proposed that Savage should put this play into the hands of Mr Thomson and Mr Mallet in order that they might fit it for the stage, that his friends should receive the profits it might bring in, and that the author should receive the produce by way of annuity. This kind and prudent scheme was rejected by Savage, with the utmost contempt.—He declared he would not submit his works to any one's correction; and that he would no longer be kept in leading-strings. Accordingly he soon returned to Bristol, in his way to London; but at Bristol, meeting with a repetition of the same kind treatment he had before found there, he was tempted to make a second stay in that opulent city, for some time. Here he was again not only cared for and treated, but the sum of £30l. was raised for him, with which it had been happy if he had immediately departed for London: But he never considered that a frequent repetition of such kindness was not to be expected, and that it was possible to tire out the generosity of his Bristol friends, as he had before tired his friends everywhere else. In short, he remained here, till his company was no longer welcome. His visits in every family were too often repeated; his wit had lost its novelty, and his irregular behaviour grew troublesome. Necessity came upon him before he was aware; his money was spent, his cloaths were worn out, his appearance was shabby, and his presence was disagreeable at every table. He now began to find every man from home, at whose house he called; and he found it difficult to obtain a dinner. Thus reduced, it would have been prudent in him to have withdrawn from the place; but prudence and Savage were never acquainted. He flattered, in the midst of poverty, hunger, and contempt, till the mistress of a coffee-house, to whom he owed about eight pounds, arrested him for the debt. He remained for some time, at a great expense, in the house of the sheriff's officer, in hopes of Savage of procuring bail; which expense he was enabled to defray, by a present of five guineas from Mr Nash at Bath. No bail, however, was to be found; so that poor Savage was at last lodged in Newgate, a prison so named in Bristol.

But it was the fortune of this extraordinary mortal, always to find more friends than he deserved. The keeper of the prison took compassion on him, and greatly softened the rigours of his confinement, by every kind of indulgence; he supported him at his own table, gave him commodious room to himself, allowed him to stand at the door of the goal, and even frequently took him into the fields for the benefit of the air and exercise: so that, in reality, Savage endured fewer hardships in this place, than he had usually suffered during the greatest part of his life.

While he remained in this not intolerable prison, his ingratitude again broke out, in a bitter satire on the city of Bristol; to which he certainly owed great obligations, notwithstanding the circumstances of his arrest; which was but the act of an individual, and that attended with no circumstances of injustice or cruelty. This satire he entitled London and Bristol Compared; and in it he abused the inhabitants of the latter, with such a spirit of resentment, that the reader would imagine he had never received any other than the most injurious treatment in that city.

When Savage had remained about six months in this hospitable prison, he received a letter from Mr Pope, (who still continued to allow him 20l. a-year) containing a charge of very atrocious ingratitude. What were the particulars of this charge, we are not informed; but, from the notorious character of the man, there is reason to fear that Savage was but too justly accused. He, however, solemnly protested his innocence; but he was very unwillingly affected on this occasion. In a few days after, he was seized with a disorder, which at first was not suspected to be dangerous; but, growing daily more languid and dejected, at last a fever seized him; and he expired on the 1st of August 1743, in the 46th year of his age.

Thus lived, and thus died, Richard Savage, Esq.; leaving behind him a character strangely chequered with vices and good qualities. Of the former we have seen a variety of instances in this abstract of his life; of the latter, his peculiar situation in the world gave him but few opportunities of making any considerable display. He was, however, undoubtedly a man of excellent parts; and, had he received the full benefits of a liberal education, and had his natural talents been cultivated to the best advantage, he might have made a respectable figure in life. He was happy in an agreeable temper and a lively flow of wit, which made his company much coveted; nor was his judgment both of writings and of men, inferior to his wit: but he was too much a slave to his passions, and his passions were too easily excited. He was warm in his friendships, but implacable in his enmity; and his greatest fault, which is indeed the greatest of all faults, was ingratitude. He seemed to think everything due to his merit, and that he was little obliged to any one for those favours which he thought it their duty to confer on him: it is therefore left to be wondered at, that he never rightly estimated the kindness of his many friends and benefactors, or preserved a grateful and due sense of their generosity towards him.

The works of this original writer, after having long lain dispersed in magazines and fugitive publications, have been lately collected and published in an elegant edition, in 2 vols 8vo; to which are prefixed, the admirable Memoirs of Savage, written by Dr Samuel Johnson.