The extreme excellence, fulness, and popularity of Johnson's Life of
Savage must excuse our doing more than mentioning the leading dates of
his history. He was the son of the Earl of Rivers and the Countess of
Macclesfield, and was born in London, 1698. His mother, who had begot
him in adultery after having openly avowed her criminality, in order to
obtain a divorce from her husband, placed the boy under the care of a
poor woman, who brought him up as her son. His maternal grandmother,
Lady Mason, however, took an interest him and placed him at a grammar
school at St Alban's. He was afterwards apprenticed to a shoemaker. On
the death of his nurse, he found some letters which led to the discovery
of his real parent. He applied to her, accordingly, to be acknowledged
as her son; but she repulsed his every advance, and persecuted him with
unrelenting barbarity. He found, however, some influential friends, such
as Steele, Fielding, Aaron Hill, Pope, and Lord Tyrconnell. He was,
however, his own worst enemy, and contracted habits of the most
irregular description. In a tavern brawl he killed one James Sinclair,
and was condemned to die; but, notwithstanding his mother's interference
to prevent the exercise of the royal clemency, he was pardoned by the
queen, who afterwards gave him a pension of £50 a-year. He supported
himself in a precarious way by writing poetical pieces. Lord Tyrconnell
took him for a while into his house, and allowed him £200 a-year, but he
soon quarrelled with him, and left. When the queen died he lost his
pension, but his friends made it up by an annuity to the same amount. He
went away to reside at Swansea, but on occasion of a visit he made to
Bristol he was arrested for a small debt, and in the prison he sickened,
and died on the 1st of August 1743. He was only forty-five years of age.
After all, Savage, in Johnson's Life, is just a dung-fly preserved in
amber. His 'Bastard,' indeed, displays considerable powers, stung by a
consciousness of wrong into convulsive action; but his other works are
nearly worthless, and his life was that of a proud, passionate, selfish,
and infatuated fool, unredeemed by scarcely one trait of genuine
excellence in character. We love and admire, even while we deeply blame,
such men as Burns; but for Savage our feeling is a curious compost of
sympathy with his misfortunes, contempt for his folly, and abhorrence
for the ingratitude, licentiousness, and other coarse and savage sins
which characterised and prematurely destroyed him.