Richard, one of the most remarkable characters that is to be met with in all the records of biography, was, according to her own confession, the son of Anne countess of Macclesfield by the Earl of Rivers, and was born in 1698. This confession of adultery was made in order to procure a separation from her husband the Earl of Macclesfield; yet, having obtained this desired end, no sooner was her spurious offspring brought into the world, than, without the dread of shame or poverty to excuse her, she discovered the resolution of disowning him, and, as long as he lived, treated him with the most unnatural cruelty. She delivered him over to a poor woman to educate as her own; prevented the Earl of Rivers from leaving him a legacy of L6000, by declaring him dead; and in effect deprived him of another legacy which his godmother Mrs Lloyd had left him, by concealing from him his birth, and thereby rendering it impossible for him to prosecute his claim. She endeavoured to send him secretly to the plantations; but this plan being either laid aside or frustrated, she placed him apprentice with a shoemaker. In this situation, however, he did not long continue; for his nurse having died, he went to take care of the effects of his supposed mother, and found in her boxes some letters which discovered to young Savage his birth, and the cause of its concealment.

From the moment of this discovery it was natural for him to become dissatisfied with his situation as a shoemaker. He now conceived that he had a right to share in the affluence of his real mother; and therefore he directly, and perhaps indiscreetly, applied to her, and made use of every art to awaken her tenderness and attract her regard. But in vain did he solicit this unnatural parent. She avoided him with the utmost precaution, and took measures to prevent his ever entering her house on any pretence whatever.

Savage was 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.

In the mean time, whilst 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 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 a 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 of Mr Wilkes, by whom he was pitied, caressed, 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 L200. The celebrated Aaron Hill was of great service to him in correcting and fitting this piece for the stage and the press; and he extended his patronage still further. 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 scarcely a shirt to his back.

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 an 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 in credit; so that the world just began to behold him with a more favourable eye than formerly, when both his fame and his 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, whilst his mother as earnestly exerted herself to prevent his receiving it. The Countess 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 repress; 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 L200 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 caressed 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 assigned 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, in a poem called The Bastard. This poem had an extraordinary sale; and its appearance happening when his mother was at Bath, many persons there took frequent opportunities of repeating passages from the Bastard in her hearing.

Some time after this, Savage formed the resolution of applying to the queen. With this view, he published a poem on her birth-day, which he entitled the Volunteer-Laureat; for which she was pleased to send him L50, 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 L50 was spent; which done, he appeared again, penniless as before. But he would never inform any person where he had been, or 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 sordid and despicable sensuality.

His wit and parts, however, still raised him new friends as fast as his behaviour lost him 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, insomuch that he often passed his nights in those mean houses that are set 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 hulk, or in winter with his associates among the ashes of a glass-house.

Yet, amidst all this penury and wretchedness, had this man so much pride, and so high an opinion of his own merit, that he was always ready to repress, 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. This life, unhappy as it may be imagined, was yet rendered more so 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.

His distress became now 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 L50 per annum, on which he was to live privately in a cheap place, for ever quitting his town haunts, and resigning all further 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 in the Bristol stage-coach for Swansea, and was furnished with fifteen guineas to bear the expense of his journey. But, on the fourteenth day after his departure, his friends and benefactors, the principal of whom was 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 method than a remittance, which was sent him, and by the help of which he was enabled to reach Bristol, 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 flattered 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 should no longer be kept in leading-strings. He soon returned to Bristol in his way to London; and there meeting with a repetition of the same kind treatment he had before found, he was tempted to make a second stay in that opulent city. Here he was again not only caressed and treated, but the sum of L30 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 clothes were worn out, his appearance was shabby, and his presence was disgustful at every table. He now began to had every man from home at whose house he called. Thus reduced, it would have been prudent in him to have withdrawn from the place; but prudence and Savage were never acquainted. He staid, 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 procuring bail; which expense he was enabled to defray by a present of five guineas from Mr Nash. 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 a commodious room to himself, allowed him to stand at the door of the jail, 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 greater part of his life. Whilst 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.

When Savage had remained about six months in this hospitable prison, he received a letter from Mr Pope, who still continued to allow him L20 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 unusually affected on this occasion. In a few days afterwards 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 forty-sixth year of his age.