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of sentiment and bold experiments in language', Mr. Savage did not think his play much improved by his innovation, and had even at that time the courage to reject several passages which he could not approve; and, what is still more laudable, Mr. Hill had the generosity not to resent the neglect of his alterations, but wrote the prologue and epilogue, in which he touches on the circumstances of the author with great tenderness 3.

After all these obstructions and compliances he was only able to bring his play upon the stage in the summer, when the chief actors had retired and the rest were in possession of the house for their own advantage. Among these, Mr. Savage was admitted to play the part of Sir Thomas Overbury, by which he gained no great reputation; the theatre being a province for which nature seemed not to have designed him, for neither his voice, look, nor gesture were such as are expected on the stage; and he was so much ashamed of having been reduced to appear as a player, that he always blotted out his name from the list when a copy of his tragedy was to be shown to his friends".

In the publication of his performance 5 he was more successful, Prologue, where it is said of him :— 'Yet amidst sorrow he disdains complaint,

• Sewell (ante, ADDISON, 68), in 1720, criticized in Hill's Creation such lines as:

Begot existence, and bid being be.' 'The word was God's! 'twas said and done!

Out-blaz'd at once the glorious sun!'

Hill's Works, 1754, i. 21, iv. 189. Of his prose the following is a specimen: I consider Mr. Pope, as a poet, of so general and extensive a genius that I look up to him as to a new constellation, wide enough to cross-spangle the whole Heaven of poetry with a milky way of fancy, and breaking out upon our nation with equal heat and brightness.' Ib. i. 22.

See also ib. ii. 239.

Hill's poems,' writes Southey (Specimens, ii. 141), 'are all faulty, and yet all bear the marks of talent.'

2

Savage in the 'Advertisement' thanks Hill 'for his many judicious corrections.' Works, i. 113. This is quoted in the Life of Savage, 1727, p. 12.

3 In the Epilogue Savage is not mentioned. In a note in the first edition of Johnson's Life of Savage [p. 25] a quotation is given from the

Nor languid in the race of life grows faint. Savage's Works, i. 116.

'It was acted only three nights, the first on June 12, 1723. When the House opened for the winter season it was once more performed for the author's benefit, Oct. 2.' Johnson's Works, viii. 112.

In the Advertisement' Savage thanks the town for their favourable reception of this play, and the applause their indulgence bestowed on the young actors; particularly for my own success in a double capacity, as actor and author, I shall ever publicly confess their generosity, as it will ever prove my secret satisfaction.' Savage's Works, i. 114.

In the Life (1727), p. 12, it is said that 'he performed the principal part himself with much applause.'

5 The Tragedy of Sir Thomas Overbury. As it is Acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane By His Majesty's Company of Comedians. Written by Richard Savage, Son of the late Earl Rivers: London, 1724.

for the rays of genius that glimmered in it, that glimmered through all the mists which poverty and Cibber had been able to spread over it2, procured him the notice and esteem of many persons eminent for their rank, their virtue, and their wit.

Of this play, acted, printed, and dedicated, the accumulated 58 profits arose to an hundred pounds, which he thought at that time a very large sum, having been never master of so much before 3.

In the Dedication, for which he received ten guineas, there is 59 nothing remarkable. The Preface contains a very liberal encomium on the blooming excellences of Mr. Theophilus Cibber 5, which Mr. Savage could not, in the latter part of his life, see his friends about to read without snatching the play out of their hands". The generosity of Mr. Hill did not end on this occasion; for afterwards, when Mr. Savage's necessities returned, he encouraged a subscription to a Miscellany of Poems in a very extraordinary manner, by publishing his story in The Plain Dealer', with some affecting lines, which he asserts to have been written by

How bad was Savage's blank verse is shown by the opening lines:How cheerfully hath this day's light broke forth!

The new risen sun, drest rich in
orient beams,
[Essex
Beholds with triumph the late wife of
Transplant her beauties from his
barren shade,

2

To flourish by the heat of love and Somerset.' Works, i. 119. Colley Cibber was alive when this attack on him appeared. What Johnson calls 'his impenetrable impudence' (post, POPE, 238) would have made the blow unfelt: Mr. Hussey (John. Misc. Preface, p. 12) recorded on the margin of a copy of the first edition of Boswell's Johnson [i. 78], Birkbeck Hill's edition, i. 149:

I have heard Johnson speak respectfully and with kindness of Colley Cibber.' See also post, SAVAGE, 177; POPE, 230.

3 Savage rewrote the play. Post, SAVAGE, 246, 279. According to Biog. Dram. iii. 280, Savage's revision was the basis of a further revision by William Woodfall and George Colman, which was well received' at Covent Garden in 1777.

The Prologue by R. B. Sheridan contains the following couplet :'Ill-fated Savage, at whose birth was given

No parent but the Muse, no friend but Heaven.'

Boswell's Johnson, iii. 115.

To Herbert Tryst, Esq., of Herefordshire [of the City of Hereford. Savage's Works, i. 111]. JOHNSON.

5 Though he labours under the present disadvantage of small stature, I cannot help concurring with the opinion of many others that in action and elocution he is certainly a prodigy.' SAVAGE, Works, i. 115. For T. CIBBER, see ante, HAMMOND, I.

Cibber, in his Lives of the Poets, 1753, v. 211, as an answer to this attack of Johnson's in 1744, says that Thomson told him it was by Savage's advice that he [Thomson] gave him the part of Melisander in Agamemnon. 'Savage with an oath affirmed that Theo. Cibber would taste it, feel it, and act it.'

The Plain Dealer was a periodical paper, written by Mr. Hill and Mr. Bond, whom Mr. Savage called the two contending powers of light and darkness. They wrote by turns each

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Mr. Savage upon the treatment received by him from his mother, but of which he was himself the author, as Mr. Savage afterwards declared. These lines, and the paper in which they were inserted, had a very powerful effect upon all but his mother, whom, by making her cruelty more publick, they only hardened in her aversion 2.

Mr. Hill not only promoted the subscription to the Miscellany3, but furnished likewise the greatest part of the Poems of which it is composed, and particularly The Happy Man, which he published as a specimen *.

The subscriptions of those whom these papers should influence to patronize merit in distress, without any other solicitation, were directed to be left at Button's coffee-house 5; and Mr. Savage going thither a few days afterwards, without expectation of any effect from his proposal, found to his surprise seventy guineas,

six Essays; and the character of the work was observed regularly to rise in Mr. Hill's weeks, and fall in Mr. Bond's. JOHNSON.

In 1736 Aaron Hill translated Voltaire's Zaïre for the benefit of Mr. William Bond; it was represented first at the Long Room in Villars Street, York Buildings, where that poor gentleman performed the part of Lusignan (the old expiring King), a character he was too well suited to, being, and looking, almost dead, as in reality he was before the run of it was over.' Cibber's Lives, v. 264, 269.

In the first edition of Johnson's Life of Savage [p. 27] these 'affecting lines' from The Plain Dealer [ante, SAVAGE, 23 n.], No. 28, June 26, 1724, are quoted.

[The opening couplet runs:
'Hopeless, abandon'd, aimless and
oppress'd,

Lost to delight and ev'ry way dis-
tressed.'

The lines are included in Aaron
Hill's Works (1754, vol. iv. p. 51)
where they are entitled, Verses
made for Mr. S-v-e, and sent to my
Lady M-ls-d his mother.' Savage,
in a letter ascribed to him, published
in The Plain Dealer, Nov. 30, 1724,
speaks of them as 'a few ineffectual
lines which I had written.']

I

* Savage, addressing Hill, writes:

'Me shun'd, me ruin'd, such a mother's rage,

You sung, till pity wept o'er every page.

You call'd my lays and wrongs to early fame;

Yet, yet th' obdurate mother felt no shame.' Eng. Poets, xli. 275.

2

'Even the most shocking personal repulses, and a series of contempt and injuries received at her hands, through the whole course of his life, have not been able to erase from his heart the impressions of his filial duty; nor, which is much more strange, of his affection.' The Plain Dealer, No. 28. His 'filial duty' might have led him not to make her cruelty public.

3 Miscellaneous Poems and Translations by several Hands. Publish'd by Richard Savage, Son of the late Earl Rivers. London, 1726. Dyer's Grongar Hill was published in it, p. 60; post, DYER, 3.

The following couplet is a specimen of The Happy Man:'Lengths of wild garden his near views adorn,

And far-seen fields wave with domestic corn.'

Hill's Works, iii. 163.

5 Ante, ADDISON, 115.

6 The names of those who so generously contributed to his relief, having been mentioned in a former

which had been sent him in consequence of the compassion excited by Mr. Hill's pathetick representation.

To this Miscellany he wrote a Preface, in which he gives an 62 account of his mother's cruelty in a very uncommon strain of humour, and with a gaiety of imagination which the success of his subscription probably produced '.

The Dedication is addressed to the Lady Mary Wortley 68 Montague, whom he flatters without reserve, and, to confess the truth, with very little art 2. The same observation may be extended to all his Dedications; his compliments are constrained and violent, heaped together without the grace of order, or the decency of introduction: he seems to have written his panegyricks for the perusal only of his patrons, and to have imagined that he had no other task than to pamper them with praises however

account, ought not to be omitted here. They were the Dutchess of Cleveland, Lady Cheyney, Lady Castlemain, Lady Gower, Lady Lechmere, the Dutchess Dowager and Dutchess of Rutland, Lady Strafford, the Countess Dowager of Warwick, Mrs. Mary Floyer, Mrs. Sofuel [sic] Noel, Duke of Rutland, Lord Gainsborough, Lord Milsington, Mr. John Savage. JOHNSON.

The 'former account' is the Life of Savage, 1727, p.18. Additional names to those there given have been added by Johnson from the list of subscribers in the Miscellany. In the list are also Steele and Young. About 110 copies were subscribed for; the subscription was half a guinea. The Plain Dealer, No. 73.

For this Preface see ante, SAVAGE, 18 n. The following is an instance of his 'gaiety of imagination':-'Thus, while legally the son of one Earl, and naturally of another, I am nominally nobody's son at all: for the Lady, having given me too much father, thought it but an equivalent deduction to leave me mother, by way of balance. So I am spurted into the world, a kind of shuttlecock between law and nature.' Savage's Works, Preface, p. 24.

no

2 This the following extract from it will prove:

'Since our country has been honoured with the glory of your wit,

as elevated and immortal as your soul, it no longer remains a doubt whether your sex have strength of mind in proportion to their sweetness. There is something in your verses as distinguished as your air. They are as strong as truth, as deep as reason, as clear as innocence, and as smooth as beauty. They contain a nameless and peculiar mixture of force and grace, which is at once so movingly serene, and so majestically lovely, that it is too amiable to appear any where but in your eyes and in your writings.

['As fortune is not more my enemy than I am the enemy of flattery,] I know not how I can forbear this application to your Ladyship, because there is scarce a possibility that I should say more than I believe, when I am speaking of your Excellence.' JOHNSON. [The words in brackets are not in the Dedication to Misc. Poems, 1726, nor are they a summary of any expressions in it.]

In The Wanderer (Eng. Poets, xli. 171) he praises :

Fair Wortley's angel-accent, eyes and mind.'

He received from her, through Dr. Young, a present of money. See her Works, 1837, Preface, p. 53.

For his gross flattery of Miss Carter see Pennington's Carter, i. 61, 62, and of Lord Tyrconnel, see post, SAVAGE, 129. For Lady M. W. Montagu see post, POPE, 265.

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gross, and that flattery would make its way to the heart, without the assistance of elegance or invention.

Soon afterwards the death of the king furnished a general subject for a poetical contest, in which Mr. Savage engaged', and is allowed to have carried the prize of honour from his competitors; but I know not whether he gained by his performance any other advantage than the increase of his reputation, though it must certainly have been with farther views that he prevailed upon himself to attempt a species of writing, of which all the topicks had been long before exhausted, and which was made at once difficult by the multitudes that had failed in it, and those that had succeeded 2.

65 He was now advancing in reputation, and, though frequently involved in very distressful perplexities, appeared, however, to be gaining upon mankind, when both his fame and his life were endangered by an event, of which it is not yet determined whether it ought to be mentioned as a crime or a calamity.

66

On the 20th of November, 1727, Mr. Savage came from Richmond, where he then lodged, that he might pursue his studies with less interruption, with an intent to discharge another lodging which he had in Westminster, and accidentally meeting two gentlemen his acquaintances, whose names were Merchant and Gregory, he went in with them to a neighbouring coffeehouse, and sat drinking till it was late; it being in no time of Mr. Savage's life any part of his character to be the first of the company that desired to separate3. He would willingly have gone to bed in the same house; but there was not room for the whole company, and therefore they agreed to ramble about the streets,