possessed by Savage; he never appeared inclined to take the advantage of
weakness, to attack the defenceless, or to press upon the falling:
Whoever was distressed was certain at last of his good wishes. But when
his heart was not softened by the sight of misery, he was obstinate in
his resentment, and did not quickly lose the remembrance of an injury.
He always harboured the sharpest resentment against judge Page; and a
short time before his death, he gratified it in a satire upon that
severe magistrate.
When in conversation this unhappy subject was mentioned, Savage appeared
neither to consider himself as a murderer, nor as a man wholly free from
blood. How much, and how long he regretted it, appeared in a poem
published many years afterwards, which the following lines will set in a
very striking light.
Is chance a guilt, that my disast'rous heart,
For mischief never meant, must ever smart?
Can self-defence be sin?--Ah! plead no more!
What tho' no purpos'd malice stain'd thee o'er;
Had Heav'n befriended thy unhappy side,
Thou had'st not been provok'd, or thou had'st died.
Far be the guilt of home-shed blood from all,
On whom, unfought, imbroiling dangers fall.
Still the pale dead revives and lives to me,
To me through pity's eye condemn'd to see.
Remembrance veils his rage, but swells his fate,
Griev'd I forgive, and am grown cool too late,
Young and unthoughtful then, who knows one day,
What rip'ning virtues might have made their way?
He might, perhaps, his country's friend have prov'd,
Been gen'rous, happy, candid and belov'd;
He might have sav'd some worth now doom'd to fall,
And I, perchance, in him have murder'd all.
Savage had now obtained his liberty, but was without any settled means
of support, and as he had lost all tenderness for his mother, who had
thirsted for his blood, he resolved to lampoon her, to extort that
pension by satire, which he knew she would never grant upon any
principles of honour, or humanity. This expedient proved successful;
whether shame still survived, though compassion was extinct, or whether
her relations had more delicacy than herself, and imagined that some of
the darts which satire might point at her, would glance upon them: Lord
Tyrconnel, whatever were his motives, upon his promise to lay aside the
design of exposing his mother, received him into his family, treated him
as his equal, and engaged to allow him a pension of 200 l. a year.
This was the golden part of Mr. Savage's life; for some time he had no
reason to complain of fortune; his appearance was splendid, his expences
large, and his acquaintance extensive. 'He was courted, says the author
of his life, by all who endeavoured to be thought men of genius, and
caressed by all that valued themselves upon a fine taste. To admire Mr.
Savage was a proof of discernment, and to be acquainted with him was a
title to poetical reputation. His presence was sufficient to make any
place of entertainment popular; and his approbation and example
constituted the fashion. So powerful is genius, when it is invested with
the glitter of affluence. Men willingly pay to fortune that regard which
they owe to merit, and are pleased when they have at once an opportunity
of exercising their vanity, and practising their duty. This interval of
prosperity furnished him with opportunities of enlarging his knowledge
of human nature, by contemplating life from its highest gradation to its
lowest.'
In this gay period of life, when he was surrounded by the affluence of
pleasure, 1729, he published the Wanderer, a Moral Poem, of which the
design is comprised in these lines.
I fly all public care, all venal strife,
To try the _Still_, compared with _Active Life_.
To prove by these the sons of men may owe,
The fruits of bliss to bursting clouds of woe,
That ev'n calamity by thought refin'd
Inspirits, and adorns the thinking mind.
And more distinctly in the following passage:
By woe the soul to daring actions swells,
By woe in plaintless patience it excells;
From patience prudent, clear experience springs,
And traces knowledge through the course of things.
Thence hope is form'd, thence fortitude, success,
Renown--Whate'er men covet or caress.
This performance was always considered by Mr. Savage as his
master-piece; but Mr. Pope, when he asked his opinion of it, told him,
that he read it once over, and was not displeased with it, that it gave
him more pleasure at the second perusal, and delighted him still more at
the third. From a poem so successfully written, it might be reasonably
expected that he should have gained considerable advantages; but the
case was otherwise; he sold the copy only for ten guineas. That he got
so small a price for so finished a poem, was not to be imputed either to
the necessity of the writer, or to the avarice of the bookseller. He was
a slave to his passions, and being then in the pursuit of some trifling
gratification, for which he wanted a supply of money, he sold his poem
to the first bidder, and perhaps for the first price which was proposed,
and probably would have been content with less, if less had been
offered. It was addressed to the earl of Tyrconnel, not only in the
first lines, but in a formal dedication, filled with the highest strains
of panegyric. These praises in a short time he found himself inclined to
retract, being discarded by the man on whom he had bestowed them, and
whom he said, he then discovered, had not deserved them.
Of this quarrel, lord Tyrconnel and Mr. Savage assigned very different
reasons. Lord Tyrconnel charged Savage with the most licentious
behaviour, introducing company into his house, and practising with them
the most irregular frolics, and committing all the outrages of
drunkenness. Lord Tyrconnel farther alledged against Savage, that the
books of which he himself had made him a present, were sold or pawned by
him, so that he had often the mortification to see them exposed to sale
upon stalls.
Savage, it seems, was so accustomed to live by expedients, that
affluence could not raise him above them. He often went to the tavern
and trusted the payment of his reckoning to the liberality of his
company; and frequently of company to whom he was very little known.
This conduct indeed, seldom drew him into much inconvenience, or his
conversation and address were so pleasing, that few thought the pleasure
which they received from him, dearly purchased by paying for his wine.
It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger,
whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he
had not often a friend long, without obliging him to become an enemy.
Mr. Savage on the other hand declared, that lord Tyrconnel quarrelled
with him because he would not subtract from his own luxury and
extravagance what he had promised to allow him; and that his resentment
was only a plea for the violation of his promise: He asserted that he
had done nothing which ought to exclude him from that subsistence which
he thought not so much a favour as a debt, since it was offered him upon
conditions, which he had never broken; and that his only fault was, that
he could not be supported upon nothing.
Savage's passions were strong, among which his resentment was not the
weakest; and as gratitude was not his constant virtue, we ought not too
hastily to give credit to all his prejudice asserts against (his once
praised patron) lord Tyrconnel.
During his continuance with the lord Tyrconnel, he wrote the Triumph of
Health and Mirth, on the recovery of the lady Tyrconnel, from a
languishing illness. This poem is built upon a beautiful fiction. Mirth
overwhelmed with sickness for the death of a favourite, takes a flight
in quest of her sister Health, whom she finds reclined upon the brow of
a lofty mountain, amidst the fragrance of a perpetual spring, and the
breezes of the morning sporting about her. Being solicited by her sister
Mirth, she readily promises her assistance, flies away in a cloud, and
impregnates the waters of Bath with new virtues, by which the sickness
of Belinda is relieved.
While Mr. Savage continued in high life, he did not let slip any
opportunity to examine whether the merit of the great is magnified or
diminished by the medium through which it is contemplated, and whether
great men were selected for high stations, or high stations made great
men. The result of his observations is not much to the advantage of
those in power.
But the golden æra of Savage's life was now at an end, he was banished
the table of lord Tyrconnel, and turned again a-drift upon the world.
While he was in prosperity, he did not behave with a moderation likely
to procure friends amongst his inferiors. He took an opportunity in the
sun-shine of his fortune, to revenge himself of those creatures, who, as
they are the worshippers of power, made court to him, whom they had
before contemptuously treated. This assuming behaviour of Savage was not
altogether unnatural. He had been avoided and despised by those
despicable sycophants, who were proud of his acquaintance when railed to
eminence. In this case, who would not spurn such mean Beings? His
degradation therefore from the condition which he had enjoyed with so
much superiority, was considered by many as an occasion of triumph.
Those who had courted him without success, had an opportunity to return
the contempt they had suffered.
Mean time, Savage was very diligent in exposing the faults of lord
Tyrconnel, over whom he obtained at least this advantage, that he drove
him first to the practice of outrage and violence; for he was so much
provoked by his wit and virulence, that he came with a number of
attendants, to beat him at a coffee-house; but it happened that he had
left the place a few minutes before: Mr. Savage went next day to repay
his visit at his own house, but was prevailed upon by his domestics to
retire without insisting upon seeing him.
He now thought himself again at full liberty to expose the cruelty of
his mother, and therefore about this time published THE BASTARD, a Poem
remarkable for the vivacity in the beginning, where he makes a pompous
enumeration of the imaginary advantages of base birth, and the pathetic
sentiments at the close; where he recounts the real calamities which he
suffered by the crime of his parents.
The verses which have an immediate relation to those two circumstances,
we shall here insert.
In gayer hours, when high my fancy ran,
The Muse exulting thus her lay began.
Bless'd be the Bastard's birth! thro' wond'rous ways,
He shines excentric like a comet's blaze.
No sickly fruit of faint compliance he;
He! stamp'd in nature's mint with extasy!
He lives to build, not boast a gen'rous race,
No tenth transmitter of a foolish face.
His daring hope, no fire's example bounds;
His first-born nights no prejudice confounds.
He, kindling from within requires no flame,
He glories in a bastard's glowing name.
--Nature's unbounded son he stands alone,
His heart unbiass'd, and his mind his own.
--O mother! yet no mother!--'Tis to you
My thanks for such distinguish'd claims are due.
--What had I lost if conjugally kind,
By nature hating, yet by vows confin'd,
You had faint drawn me with a form alone,
A lawful lump of life, by force your own!
--I had been born your dull domestic heir,
Load of your life and motive of your care;
Perhaps been poorly rich and meanly great;
The slave of pomp, a cypher in the state:
Lordly neglectful of a worth unknown,
And slumb'ring in a feat by chance my own,
After mentioning the death of Sinclair, he goes on thus:
--Where shall my hope find rest?--No mother's care
Shielded my infant innocence with prayer;
No father's guardian hand my youth maintain'd,
Call'd forth my virtues, and from vice refrain'd.
This poem had extraordinary success, great numbers were immediately
dispersed, and editions were multiplied with unusual rapidity.
One circumstance attended the publication, which Savage used to relate
with great satisfaction. His mother, to whom the poem with due reverence
was inscribed, happened then to be at Bath, where she could not
conveniently retire from censure, or conceal herself from observation;
and no sooner did the reputation of the poem begin to spread, than she
heard it repeated in all places of concourse; nor could she enter the
assembly rooms, or cross the walks, without being saluted with some
lines from the Bastard. She therefore left Bath with the utmost haste,
to shelter herself in the crowds of London. Thus Savage had the
satisfaction of finding, that tho' he could not reform, he could yet
punish his mother.
Some time after Mr. Savage took a resolution of applying to the queen,
that having once given him life, she would enable him to support it, and
therefore published a short poem on her birth day, to which he gave the
odd title of Volunteer-Laureat. He had not at that time one friend to
present his poem at court, yet the Queen, notwithstanding this act of
ceremony was wanting, in a few days after publication, sent him a bank
note of fifty-pounds, by lord North and Guildford; and her permission to
write annually on the same subject, and that he should yearly receive
the like present, till something better should be done for him. After
this he was permitted to present one of his annual poems to her majesty,
and had the honour of kissing her hand.
When the dispute between the bishop of London, and the chancellor,
furnished for some time the chief topic of conversation, Mr. Savage who
was an enemy to all claims of ecclesiastical power, engaged with his
usual zeal against the bishop. In consequence of his aversion to the
dominion of superstitious churchmen, he wrote a poem called The Progress
of a Divine, in which he conducts a profligate priest thro' all the
gradations of wickedness, from a poor curacy in the country, to the
highest preferment in the church; and after describing his behaviour in
every station, enumerates that this priest thus accomplished, found at
last a patron in the bishop of London.
The clergy were universally provoked with this satire, and Savage was
censured in the weekly Miscellany, with a severity he did not seem
inclined to forget: But a return of invective was not thought a
sufficient punishment. The court of King's-Bench was moved against him,
and he was obliged to return an answer to a charge of obscenity. It was
urged in his defence, that obscenity was only criminal, when it was
intended to promote the practice of vice; but that Mr. Savage had only
introduced obscene ideas, with a view of exposing them to detestation,
and of amending the age, by shewing the deformity of wickedness. This
plea was admitted, and Sir Philip York, now lord Chancellor, who then
presided in that court, dismissed the information, with encomiums upon
the purity and excellence of Mr. Savage's writings.
He was still in his usual exigencies, having no certain support, but the
pension allowed him from the Queen, which was not sufficient to last him
the fourth part of the year. His conduct, with regard to his pension,
was very particular. No sooner had he changed the bill, than he vanished
from the sight of all his acquaintances, and lay, for some time, out of
the reach of his most intimate friends. At length he appeared again
pennyless as before, but never informed any person where he had been,
nor was his retreat ever discovered. This was his constant practice
during the whole time he received his pension. He regularly disappeared,
and returned. He indeed affirmed that he retired to study, and that the
money supported him in solitude for many months, but his friends
declared, that the short time in which it was spent, sufficiently
confuted his own account of his conduct.
His perpetual indigence, politeness, and wit, still raised him friends,
who were desirous to set him above want, and therefore sollicited Sir
Robert Walpole in his favour, but though promises were given, and Mr.
Savage trusted, and was trusted, yet these added but one mortification
more to the many he had suffered. His hopes of preferment from that
statesman; issued in a disappointment; upon which he published a poem in
the Gentleman's Magazine, entitled, The Poet's Dependance on a
Statesman; in which he complains of the severe usage he met with. But to
despair was no part of the character of Savage; when one patronage
failed, he had recourse to another. The Prince was now extremely
popular, and had very liberally rewarded the merit of some writers, whom
Mr. Savage did not think superior to himself; and therefore he resolved
to address a poem to him.
For this purpose he made choice of a subject, which could regard only
persons of the highest rank, and greatest affluence, and which was
therefore proper for a poem intended to procure the patronage of a
prince; namely, public spirit, with regard to public works. But having
no friend upon whom he could prevail to present it to the Prince, he had
no other method of attracting his observation, than by publishing
frequent advertisements, and therefore received no reward from his
patron, however generous upon other occasions. His poverty still
pressing, he lodged as much by accident, as he dined; for he generally
lived by chance, eating only when he was invited to the tables of his
acquaintance, from which, the meanness of his dress often excluded him,
when the politeness, and variety of his conversation, would have been
thought a sufficient recompence for his entertainment. Having no
lodging, he passed the night often in mean houses, which are set open
for any casual wanderers; sometimes in cellars, amongst the riot and
filth of the meanest and most profligate of the rabble; and sometimes
when he was totally without money, walked about the streets till he was
weary, and lay down in the summer upon a bulk, and in the winter, with
his associates in poverty, among the ashes of a glass-house.
In this manner were passed those days and nights, which nature had
enabled him to have employed in elevated speculations. On a bulk, in a
cellar, or in a glass-house, among thieves and beggars, was to be found
the author of The Wanderer, the man, whose remarks in life might have
assisted the statesman, whose ideas of virtue might have enlightened the
moralist, whose eloquence might have influenced senates, and whose
delicacy might have polished courts. His distresses, however afflictive,
never dejected him. In his lowest sphere he wanted not spirit to assert
the natural dignity of wit, and was always ready to repress that
insolence, which superiority of fortune incited, and to trample that
reputation which rose upon any other basis, than that of merit. He never
admitted any gross familiarity, or submitted to be treated otherwise
than as an equal.
Once, when he was without lodging, meat, or cloaths, one of his friends,
a man indeed not remarkable for moderation in prosperity, left a
message, that he desired to see him about nine in the morning. Savage
knew that his intention was to assist him, but was very much disgusted,
that he should presume to prescribe the hour of his attendance; and
therefore rejected his kindness.
The greatest hardships of poverty were to Savage, not the want of
lodging, or of food, but the neglect and contempt it drew upon him. He
complained that as his affairs grew desperate, he found his reputation
for capacity visibly decline; that his opinion in questions of criticism
was no longer regarded, when his coat was out of fashion; and that
those, who in the interval of his prosperity, were always encouraging
him to great undertakings, by encomiums on his genius, and assurances of
success, now received any mention of his designs with coldness, and, in
short, allowed him to be qualified for no other performance than
volunteer-laureat. Yet even this kind of contempt never depressed him,
for he always preserved a steady confidence in his own capacity, and
believed nothing above his reach, which he should at any time earnestly
endeavour to attain.
This life, unhappy as it may be already imagined, was yet embittered in
1738 with new distresses. The death of the Queen deprived him of all the
prospects of preferment, with which he had so long entertained his
imagination. But even against this calamity there was an expedient at
hand. He had taken a resolution of writing a second tragedy upon the
story of Sir Thomas Overbury, in which he made a total alteration of the
plan, added new incidents, and introduced new characters, so that it was
a new tragedy, not a revival of the former. With the profits of this
scheme, when finished, he fed his imagination, but proceeded slowly in
it, and, probably, only employed himself upon it, when he could find no
other amusement. Upon the Queen's death it was expected of him, that he
should honour her memory with a funeral panegyric: He was thought
culpable for omitting it; but on her birth-day, next year, he gave a
proof of the power of genius and judgment. He knew that the track of
elegy had been so long beaten, that it was impossible to travel in it,
without treading the footsteps of those who had gone before him, and
therefore it was necessary that he might distinguish himself from the
herd of encomists, to find out some new walk of funeral panegyric.
This difficult task he performed in such a manner, that this poem may be
justly ranked the best of his own, and amongst the best pieces that the
death of Princes has produced. By transferring the mention of her death,
to her birth-day, he has formed a happy combination of topics, which any
other man would have thought it difficult to connect in one view; but
the relation between them appears natural; and it may be justly said,
that what no other man could have thought on, now seems scarcely
possible for any man to miss. In this poem, when he takes occasion to
mention the King, he modestly gives him a hint to continue his pension,
which, however, he did not receive at the usual time, and there was some
reason to think that it would be discontinued. He did not take those
methods of retrieving his interest, which were most likely to succeed,
for he went one day to Sir Robert Walpole's levee, and demanded the
reason of the distinction that was made between him and the other
pensioners of the Queen, with a degree of roughness which, perhaps,
determined him to withdraw, what had only been delayed. This last
misfortune he bore not only with decency, but cheerfulness, nor was his
gaiety clouded, even by this disappointment, though he was, in a short
time, reduced to the lowest degree of distress, and often wanted both
lodging and food. At this time he gave another instance of the
insurmountable obstinacy of his spirit. His cloaths were worn out, and
he received notice, that at a coffee-house some cloaths and linen were
left for him. The person who sent them did not, we believe, inform him
to whom he was to be obliged, that he might spare the perplexity of
acknowledging the benefit; but though the offer was so far generous, it
was made with some neglect of ceremonies, which Mr. Savage so much
resented, that he refused the present, and declined to enter the house
'till the cloaths, which were designed for him, were taken away.
His distress was now publicly known, and his friends therefore thought
it proper to concert some measures for his relief. The scheme proposed
was, that he should retire into Wales, and receive an allowance of fifty
pounds a year, to be raised by subscription, on which he was to live
privately in a cheap place, without aspiring any more to affluence, or
having any farther sollicitude for fame.
This offer Mr. Savage gladly accepted, though with intentions very
different from those of his friends; for they proposed that he should
continue an exile from London for ever, and spend all the remaining part
of his life at Swansea; but he designed only to take the opportunity
which their scheme offered him, of retreating for a short time, that he
might prepare his play for the stage, and his other works for the press,
and then to return to London to exhibit his tragedy, and live upon the
profits of his own labour.