The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland Volume V Part 3

Some time after he had obtained his liberty, he met in the street the woman of the town that had swore against him: She informed him that she was in distress, and with unparalleled a.s.surance desired him to relieve her. He, instead of insulting her misery, and taking pleasure in the calamity of one who had brought his life into danger, reproved her gently for her perjury, and changing the only guinea he had, divided it equally between her and himself.

Compa.s.sion seems indeed to have been among the few good qualities 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 compa.s.sion 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 t.i.tle to poetical reputation. His presence was sufficient to make any place of entertainment popular; and his approbation and example const.i.tuted the fas.h.i.+on. 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 pa.s.sage:

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 fort.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sions, 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 a.s.signed 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 p.a.w.ned 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 a.s.serted 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 pa.s.sions were strong, among which his resentment was not the weakest; and as grat.i.tude was not his constant virtue, we ought not too hastily to give credit to all his prejudice a.s.serts 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 languis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sistance, 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 aera 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-s.h.i.+ne of his fortune, to revenge himself of those creatures, who, as they are the wors.h.i.+ppers of power, made court to him, whom they had before contemptuously treated. This a.s.suming 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d, 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 circ.u.mstances, we shall here insert.

In gayer hours, when high my fancy ran, The Muse exulting thus her lay began.

Bless'd be the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's birth! thro' wond'rous ways, He s.h.i.+nes 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d's glowing name.

-Nature's unbounded son he stands alone, His heart unbia.s.s'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 s.h.i.+elded 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 circ.u.mstance 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 a.s.sembly rooms, or cross the walks, without being saluted with some lines from the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. 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 t.i.tle 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 superst.i.tious 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, ent.i.tled, 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 publis.h.i.+ng frequent advertis.e.m.e.nts, 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociates in poverty, among the ashes of a gla.s.s-house.

In this manner were pa.s.sed those days and nights, which nature had enabled him to have employed in elevated speculations. On a bulk, in a cellar, or in a gla.s.s-house, among thieves and beggars, was to be found the author of The Wanderer, the man, whose remarks in life might have a.s.sisted 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 a.s.sert 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 a.s.sist him, but was very much disgusted, that he should presume to prescribe the hour of his attendance; and therefore rejected his kindness.

The greatest hards.h.i.+ps 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 fas.h.i.+on; and that those, who in the interval of his prosperity, were always encouraging him to great undertakings, by encomiums on his genius, and a.s.surances 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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.

After many sollicitations and delays, a subscription was at last raised, which did not amount to fifty pounds a year, though twenty were paid by one gentleman. He was, however, satisfied, and willing to retire, and was convinced that the allowance, though scanty, would be more than sufficient for him, being now determined to commence a rigid oeconomist.

Full of these salutary resolutions, he quitted London in 1739. He was furnished with fifteen guineas, and was told, that they would be sufficient, not only for the expence of his journey, but for his support in Wales for some time; and that there remained but little more of the first collection. He promised a strict adherence to his maxims of parsimony, and went away in the stage coach; nor did his friends expect to hear from him, 'till he informed them of his arrival at Swansea. But, when they least expected, arrived a letter dated the 14th day after his departure, in which he sent them word, that he was yet upon the road, and without money, and that he therefore could not proceed without a remittance. They then sent him the money that was in their hands, with which he was enabled to reach Bristol, from whence he was to go to Swansea by water. At Bristol he found an embargo laid upon the s.h.i.+pping, so that he could not immediately obtain a pa.s.sage, and being therefore obliged to stay there some time, he, with his usual felicity, ingratiated himself with many of the princ.i.p.al inhabitants, was invited to their houses, distinguished at their public feasts, and treated with a regard that gratified his vanity, and therefore easily engaged his affection.

After some stay at Bristol, he retired to Swansea, the place originally proposed for his residence, where he lived about a year very much disatisfied with the diminution of his salary, for the greatest part of the contributors, irritated by Mr. Savage's letters, which they imagined treated them contemptuously, withdrew their subscriptions. At this place, as in every other, he contracted an acquaintance with those who were most distinguished in that country, among whom, he has celebrated Mr. Powel, and Mrs. Jones, by some verses inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine. Here he compleated his tragedy, of which two acts were wanting when he left London, and was desirous of coming to town to bring it on the stage. This design was very warmly opposed, and he was advised by his chief benefactor, who was no other than Mr. Pope, to put it in the hands of Mr. Thomson and Mr. Mallet, that it might be fitted for the stage, and to allow his friends to receive the profits, out of which an annual pension should be paid him. This proposal he rejected with the utmost contempt. He was by no means convinced that the judgment of those to whom he was required to submit, was superior to his own. He was now determined, as he expressed, to be no longer kept in leading-strings, and had no elevated idea of his bounty, who proposed to pension him out of the profits of his own labours. He soon after this quitted Swansea, and, with an intent to return to London, went to Bristol, where a repet.i.tion of the kindness which he had formerly found, invited him to stay. He was not only caressed, and treated, but had a collection made for him of about thirty pounds, with which it had been happy if he had immediately departed for London; but he never considered that such proofs of kindness were not often to be expected, and that this ardour of benevolence was, in a great degree, the effect of novelty.

Another part of his misconduct was, the practice of prolonging his visits to unseasonable hours, and disconcerting all the families into which he was admitted. This was an error in a place of commerce, which all the charms of conversion could not compensate; for what trader would purchase such airy satisfaction, with the loss of solid gain, which must be the consequence of midnight merriment, as those hours which were gained at night were generally lost in the morning? Distress at last stole upon him by imperceptible degrees; his conduct had already wearied some of those who were at first enamoured of his conversation; but he still might have devolved to others, whom he might have entertained with equal success, had not the decay of his cloaths made it no longer consistent with decency to admit him to their tables, or to a.s.sociate with him in public places. He now began to find every man from home, at whose house he called; and was therefore no longer able to procure the necessaries of life, but wandered about the town, slighted and neglected, in quest of a dinner, which, he did not always obtain. To compleat his misery, he was obliged to withdraw from the small number of friends from whom he had still reason to hope for favours. His custom was to lie in bed the greatest part of the day, and to go out in the dark with the utmost privacy, and after having paid his visit, return again before morning to his lodging, which was in the garret of an obscure inn.

Being thus excluded on one hand, and confined on the other, he suffered the utmost extremities of poverty, and often waited so long, that he was seized with faintness, and had lost his appet.i.te, not being able to bear the smell of meat, 'till the action of his stomach was restored by a cordial.

He continued to bear these severe pressures, 'till the landlady of a coffee-house, to whom he owed about eight pounds, compleated his wretchedness. He was arrested by order of this woman, and conducted to the house of a Sheriff's Officer, where he remained some time at a great expence, in hopes of finding bail. This expence he was enabled to support by a present from Mr. Nash of Bath, who, upon hearing of his late mis-fortune, sent him five guineas. No friends would contribute to release him from prison at the expence of eight pounds, and therefore he was removed to Newgate. He bore this misfortune with an unshaken fort.i.tude, and indeed the treatment he met with from Mr. Dagg, the keeper of the prison, greatly softened the rigours of his confinement. He was supported by him at his own table, without any certainty of recompence; had a room to himself, to which he could at any time retire from all disturbance; was allowed to stand at the door of the prison, and sometimes taken out into the fields; so that he suffered fewer hards.h.i.+ps in the prison, than he had been accustomed to undergo the greatest part of his life. Virtue is undoubtedly most laudable in that state which makes it most difficult; and therefore the humanity of the gaoler certainly deserves this public attestation.