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Johnson's Lives of the Poets — Volume 1

by Samuel Johnson · English · Gutenberg #4679 · 383,236 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Johnson's Lives of the Poets — Volume 1

Author: Samuel Johnson


        
Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #4679]
                Most recently updated: May 31, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4679

Credits: Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition by Les Bowler


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHNSON'S LIVES OF THE POETS — VOLUME 1 ***


Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition by Les Bowler.

                          [Picture: Book cover]

                       CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.

                                * * * * *





                                  LIVES
                                  OF THE
                              ENGLISH POETS


                        Addison    Savage    Swift

                                * * * * *

                                    BY
                          SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]

                       CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
                _LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
                                  1888.




INTRODUCTION.


JOHNSON’S “Lives of the Poets” were written to serve as Introductions to
a trade edition of the works of poets whom the booksellers selected for
republication. Sometimes, therefore, they dealt briefly with men in whom
the public at large has long ceased to be interested. Richard Savage
would be of this number if Johnson’s account of his life had not secured
for him lasting remembrance. Johnson’s Life of Savage in this volume has
not less interest than the Lives of Addison and Swift, between which it
is set, although Savage himself has no right at all to be remembered in
such company. Johnson published this piece of biography when his age was
thirty-five; his other lives of poets appeared when that age was about
doubled. He was very poor when the Life of Savage was written for Cave.
Soon after its publication, we are told, Mr. Harte dined with Cave, and
incidentally praised it. Meeting him again soon afterwards Cave said to
Mr. Harte, “You made a man very happy t’other day.”  “How could that be?”
asked Harte. “Nobody was there but ourselves.”  Cave answered by
reminding him that a plate of victuals was sent behind a screen, which
was to Johnson, dressed so shabbily that he did not choose to appear.

Johnson, struggling, found Savage struggling, and was drawn to him by
faith in the tale he told. We have seen in our own time how even an
Arthur Orton could find sensible and good people to believe the tale with
which he sought to enforce claim upon the Tichborne baronetcy. Savage had
literary skill, and he could personate the manners of a gentleman in days
when there were still gentlemen of fashion who drank, lied, and swaggered
into midnight brawls. I have no doubt whatever that he was the son of the
nurse with whom the Countess of Macclesfield had placed a child that
died, and that after his mother’s death he found the papers upon which he
built his plot to personate the child, extort money from the Countess and
her family, and bring himself into a profitable notoriety.

Johnson’s simple truthfulness and ready sympathy made it hard for him to
doubt the story told as Savage told it to him. But when he told it again
himself, though he denounced one whom he believed to be an unnatural
mother, and dealt gently with his friend, he did not translate evil into
good. Through all the generous and kindly narrative we may see clearly
that Savage was an impostor. There is the heart of Johnson in the noble
appeal against judgment of the self-righteous who have never known the
harder trials of the world, when he says of Savage, “Those are no proper
judges of his conduct, who have slumbered away their time on the down of
plenty; nor will any wise man easily presume to say, ‘Had I been in
Savage’s condition, I should have lived or written better than Savage.’”
But Johnson, who made large allowance for temptations pressing on the
poor, himself suffered and overcame the hardest trials, firm always to
his duty, true servant of God and friend of man.

Richard Savage’s whole public life was built upon a lie. His base nature
foiled any attempt made to befriend him; and the friends he lost, he
slandered; Richard Steele among them. Samuel Johnson was a friend easy to
make, and difficult to lose. There was no money to be got from him, for
he was altogether poor in everything but the large spirit of human
kindness. Savage drew largely on him for sympathy, and had it; although
Johnson was too clear-sighted to be much deceived except in judgment upon
the fraudulent claims which then gave rise to division of opinion. The
Life of Savage is a noble piece of truth, although it rests on faith put
in a fraud.

                                                                     H. M.




ADDISON.


JOSEPH ADDISON was born on the 1st of May, 1672, at Milston, of which his
father, Lancelot Addison, was then rector, near Ambrosebury, in
Wiltshire, and, appearing weak and unlikely to live, he was christened
the same day. After the usual domestic education, which from the
character of his father may be reasonably supposed to have given him
strong impressions of piety, he was committed to the care of Mr. Naish at
Ambrosebury, and afterwards of Mr. Taylor at Salisbury.

Not to name the school or the masters of men illustrious for literature,
is a kind of historical fraud, by which honest fame is injuriously
diminished: I would therefore trace him through the whole process of his
education. In 1683, in the beginning of his twelfth year, his father,
being made Dean of Lichfield, naturally carried his family to his new
residence, and, I believe, placed him for some time, probably not long,
under Mr. Shaw, then master of the school at Lichfield, father of the
late Dr. Peter Shaw. Of this interval his biographers have given no
account, and I know it only from a story of a _barring-out_, told me,
when I was a boy, by Andrew Corbet, of Shropshire, who had heard it from
Mr. Pigot, his uncle.

The practice of _barring-out_ was a savage licence, practised in many
schools to the end of the last century, by which the boys, when the
periodical vacation drew near, growing petulant at the approach of
liberty, some days before the time of regular recess, took possession of
the school, of which they barred the doors, and bade their master
defiance from the windows. It is not easy to suppose that on such
occasions the master would do more than laugh; yet, if tradition may be
credited, he often struggled hard to force or surprise the garrison. The
master, when Pigot was a schoolboy, was _barred out_ at Lichfield; and
the whole operation, as he said, was planned and conducted by Addison.

To judge better of the probability of this story, I have inquired when he
was sent to the Chartreux; but, as he was not one of those who enjoyed
the founder’s benefaction, there is no account preserved of his
admission. At the school of the Chartreux, to which he was removed either
from that of Salisbury or Lichfield, he pursued his juvenile studies
under the care of Dr. Ellis, and contracted that intimacy with Sir
Richard Steele which their joint labours have so effectually recorded.

Of this memorable friendship the greater praise must be given to Steele.
It is not hard to love those from whom nothing can be feared; and Addison
never considered Steele as a rival; but Steele lived, as he confesses,
under an habitual subjection to the predominating genius of Addison, whom
he always mentioned with reverence, and treated with obsequiousness.

Addison, who knew his own dignity, could not always forbear to show it,
by playing a little upon his admirer; but he was in no danger of retort;
his jests were endured without resistance or resentment. But the sneer of
jocularity was not the worst. Steele, whose imprudence of generosity, or
vanity of profusion, kept him always incurably necessitous, upon some
pressing exigence, in an evil hour, borrowed a hundred pounds of his
friend probably without much purpose of repayment; but Addison, who seems
to have had other notions of a hundred pounds, grew impatient of delay,
and reclaimed his loan by an execution. Steele felt with great
sensibility the obduracy of his creditor, but with emotions of sorrow
rather than of anger.

In 1687 he was entered into Queen’s College in Oxford, where, in 1689,
the accidental perusal of some Latin verses gained him the patronage of
Dr. Lancaster, afterwards Provost of Queen’s College; by whose
recommendation he was elected into Magdalen College as a demy, a term by
which that society denominates those who are elsewhere called scholars:
young men who partake of the founder’s benefaction, and succeed in their
order to vacant fellowships. Here he continued to cultivate poetry and
criticism, and grew first eminent by his Latin compositions, which are
indeed entitled to particular praise. He has not confined himself to the
imitation of any ancient author, but has formed his style from the
general language, such as a diligent perusal of the productions of
different ages happened to supply. His Latin compositions seem to have
had much of his fondness, for he collected a second volume of the “Musæ
Anglicanæ” perhaps for a convenient receptacle, in which all his Latin
pieces are inserted, and where his poem on the Peace has the first place.
He afterwards presented the collection to Boileau, who from that time
“conceived,” says Tickell, “an opinion of the English genius for poetry.”
Nothing is better known of Boileau than that he had an injudicious and
peevish contempt of modern Latin, and therefore his profession of regard
was probably the effect of his civility rather than approbation.

Three of his Latin poems are upon subjects on which perhaps he would not
have ventured to have written in his own language: “The Battle of the
Pigmies and Cranes,” “The Barometer,” and “A Bowling-green.”  When the
matter is low or scanty, a dead language, in which nothing is mean
because nothing is familiar, affords great conveniences; and by the
sonorous magnificence of Roman syllables, the writer conceals penury of
thought, and want of novelty, often from the reader and often from
himself.

In his twenty-second year he first showed his power of English poetry by
some verses addressed to Dryden; and soon after published a translation
of the greater part of the Fourth Georgic upon Bees; after which, says
Dryden, “my latter swarm is scarcely worth the hiving.”  About the same
time he composed the arguments prefixed to the several books of Dryden’s
Virgil; and produced an Essay on the Georgics, juvenile, superficial, and
uninstructive, without much either of the scholar’s learning or the
critic’s penetration. His next paper of verses contained a character of
the principal English poets, inscribed to Henry Sacheverell, who was
then, if not a poet, a writer of verses; as is shown by his version of a
small part of Virgil’s Georgics, published in the Miscellanies; and a
Latin encomium on Queen Mary, in the “Musæ Anglicanæ.”  These verses
exhibit all the fondness of friendship; but, on one side or the other,
friendship was afterwards too weak for the malignity of faction. In this
poem is a very confident and discriminate character of Spenser, whose
work he had then never read; so little sometimes is criticism the effect
of judgment. It is necessary to inform the reader that about this time he
was introduced by Congreve to Montague, then Chancellor of the Exchequer:
Addison was then learning the trade of a courtier, and subjoined Montague
as a poetical name to those of Cowley and of Dryden. By the influence of
Mr. Montague, concurring, according to Tickell, with his natural modesty,
he was diverted from his original design of entering into holy orders.
Montague alleged the corruption of men who engaged in civil employments
without liberal education; and declared that, though he was represented
as an enemy to the Church, he would never do it any injury but by
withholding Addison from it.

Soon after (in 1695) he wrote a poem to King William, with a rhyming
introduction addressed to Lord Somers. King William had no regard to
elegance or literature; his study was only war; yet by a choice of
Ministers, whose disposition was very different from his own, he
procured, without intention, a very liberal patronage to poetry. Addison
was caressed both by Somers and Montague.

In 1697 appeared his Latin verses on the Peace of Ryswick, which he
dedicated to Montague, and which was afterwards called, by Smith, “the
best Latin poem since the ‘Æneid.’”  Praise must not be too rigorously
examined; but the performance cannot be denied to be vigorous and
elegant. Having yet no public employment, he obtained (in 1699) a pension
of three hundred pounds a year, that he might be enabled to travel. He
stayed a year at Blois, probably to learn the French language and then
proceeded in his journey to Italy, which he surveyed with the eyes of a
poet. While he was travelling at leisure, he was far from being idle: for
he not only collected his observations on the country, but found time to
write his “Dialogues on Medals,” and four acts of _Cato_. Such, at least,
is the relation of Tickell. Perhaps he only collected his materials and
formed his plan. Whatever were his other employments in Italy, he there
wrote the letter to Lord Halifax which is justly considered as the most
elegant, if not the most sublime, of his poetical productions. But in
about two years he found it necessary to hasten home; being, as Swift
informs us, distressed by indigence, and compelled to become the tutor of
a travelling squire, because his pension was not remitted.

At his return he published his Travels, with a dedication to Lord Somers.
As his stay in foreign countries was short, his observations are such as
might be supplied by a hasty view, and consist chiefly in comparisons of
the present face of the country with the descriptions left us by the
Roman poets, from whom he made preparatory collections, though he might
have spared the trouble had he known that such collections had been made
twice before by Italian authors.

The most amusing passage of his book is his account of the minute
republic of San Marino; of many parts it is not a very severe censure to
say that they might have been written at home. His elegance of language,
and variegation of prose and verse, however, gain upon the reader; and
the book, though awhile neglected, became in time so much the favourite
of the public that before it was reprinted it rose to five times its
price.

When he returned to England (in 1702), with a meanness of appearance
which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced, he
found his old patrons out of power, and was therefore, for a time, at
full leisure for the cultivation of his mind; and a mind so cultivated
gives reason to believe that little time was lost. But he remained not
long neglected or useless. The victory at Blenheim (1704) spread triumph
and confidence over the nation; and Lord Godolphin, lamenting to Lord
Halifax that it had not been celebrated in a manner equal to the subject,
desired him to propose it to some better poet. Halifax told him that
there was no encouragement for genius; that worthless men were
unprofitably enriched with public money, without any care to find or
employ those whose appearance might do honour to their country. To this
Godolphin replied that such abuses should in time be rectified; and that,
if a man could be found capable of the task then proposed, he should not
want an ample recompense. Halifax then named Addison, but required that
the Treasurer should apply to him in his own person. Godolphin sent the
message by Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord Carlton; and Addison, having
undertaken the work, communicated it to the Treasury while it was yet
advanced no further than the simile of the angel, and was immediately
rewarded by succeeding Mr. Locke in the place of Commissioner of Appeals.

In the following year he was at Hanover with Lord Halifax: and the year
after he was made Under Secretary of State, first to Sir Charles Hedges,
and in a few months more to the Earl of Sunderland. About this time the
prevalent taste for Italian operas inclined him to try what would be the
effect of a musical drama in our own language. He therefore wrote the
opera of Rosamond, which, when exhibited on the stage, was either hissed
or neglected; but, trusting that the readers would do him more justice,
he published it with an inscription to the Duchess of Marlborough—a woman
without skill, or pretensions to skill, in poetry or literature. His
dedication was therefore an instance of servile absurdity, to be exceeded
only by Joshua Barnes’s dedication of a Greek Anacreon to the Duke. His
reputation had been somewhat advanced by The Tender Husband, a comedy
which Steele dedicated to him, with a confession that he owed to him
several of the most successful scenes. To this play Addison supplied a
prologue.

When the Marquis of Wharton was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,
Addison attended him as his secretary; and was made Keeper of the
Records, in Birmingham’s Tower, with a salary of three hundred pounds a
year. The office was little more than nominal, and the salary was
augmented for his accommodation. Interest and faction allow little to the
operation of particular dispositions or private opinions. Two men of
personal characters more opposite than those of Wharton and Addison could
not easily be brought together. Wharton was impious, profligate, and
shameless; without regard, or appearance of regard, to right and wrong.
Whatever is contrary to this may be said of Addison; but as agents of a
party they were connected, and how they adjusted their other sentiments
we cannot know.

Addison must, however, not be too hastily condemned. It is not necessary
to refuse benefits from a bad man when the acceptance implies no
approbation of his crimes; nor has the subordinate officer any obligation
to examine the opinions or conduct of those under whom he acts, except
that he may not be made the instrument of wickedness. It is reasonable to
suppose that Addison counteracted, as far as he was able, the malignant
and blasting influence of the Lieutenant; and that at least by his
intervention some good was done, and some mischief prevented. When he was
in office he made a law to himself, as Swift has recorded, never to remit
his regular fees in civility to his friends: “for,” said he, “I may have
a hundred friends; and if my fee be two guineas, I shall, by
relinquishing my right, lose two hundred guineas, and no friend gain more
than two; there is therefore no proportion between the good imparted and
the evil suffered.”  He was in Ireland when Steele, without any
communication of his design, began the publication of the _Tatler_; but
he was not long concealed; by inserting a remark on Virgil which Addison
had given him he discovered himself. It is, indeed, not easy for any man
to write upon literature or common life so as not to make himself known
to those with whom he familiarly converses, and who are acquainted with
his track of study, his favourite topic, his peculiar notions, and his
habitual phrases.

If Steele desired to write in secret, he was not lucky; a single month
detected him. His first _Tatler_ was published April 22 (1709); and
Addison’s contribution appeared May 26. Tickell observes that the
_Tatler_ began and was concluded without his concurrence. This is
doubtless literally true; but the work did not suffer much by his
unconsciousness of its commencement, or his absence at its cessation; for
he continued his assistance to December 23, and the paper stopped on
January 2. He did not distinguish his pieces by any signature; and I know
not whether his name was not kept secret till the papers were collected
into volumes.

To the _Tatler_, in about two months, succeeded the _Spectator_: a series
of essays of the same kind, but written with less levity, upon a more
regular plan, and published daily. Such an undertaking showed the writers
not to distrust their own copiousness of materials or facility of
composition, and their performance justified their confidence. They
found, however, in their progress many auxiliaries. To attempt a single
paper was no terrifying labour; many pieces were offered, and many were
received.

Addison had enough of the zeal of party; but Steele had at that time
almost nothing else. The _Spectator_, in one of the first papers, showed
the political tenets of its authors; but a resolution was soon taken of
courting general approbation by general topics, and subjects on which
faction had produced no diversity of sentiments—such as literature,
morality, and familiar life. To this practice they adhered with few
deviations. The ardour of Steele once broke out in praise of Marlborough;
and when Dr. Fleetwood prefixed to some sermons a preface overflowing
with Whiggish opinions, that it might be read by the Queen, it was
reprinted in the _Spectator_.

To teach the minuter decencies and inferior duties, to regulate the
practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which are
rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances which, if
they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was first
attempted by Casa in his book of “Manners,” and Castiglione in his
“Courtier:” two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance,
and which, if they are now less read, are neglected only because they
have effected that reformation which their authors intended, and their
precepts now are no longer wanted. Their usefulness to the age in which
they were written is sufficiently attested by the translations which
almost all the nations of Europe were in haste to obtain.

This species of instruction was continued, and perhaps advanced, by the
French; among whom La Bruyère’s “Manners of the Age” (though, as Boileau
remarked, it is written without connection) certainly deserves praise for
liveliness of description and justness of observation.

Before the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_, if the writers for the theatre are
excepted, England had no masters of common life. No writers had yet
undertaken to reform either the savageness of neglect, or the
impertinence of civility; to show when to speak, or to be silent; how to
refuse, or how to comply. We had many books to teach us our more
important duties, and to settle opinions in philosophy or politics; but
an _arbiter elegantiarum_, (a judge of propriety) was yet wanting who
should survey the track of daily conversation, and free it from thorns
and prickles, which tease the passer, though they do not wound him. For
this purpose nothing is so proper as the frequent publication of short
papers, which we read, not as study, but amusement. If the subject be
slight, the treatise is short. The busy may find time, and the idle may
find patience. This mode of conveying cheap and easy knowledge began
among us in the civil war, when it was much the interest of either party
to raise and fix the prejudices of the people. At that time appeared
_Mercurius Aulicus_, _Mercurius Rusticus_, and _Mercurius Civicus_. It is
said that when any title grew popular, it was stolen by the antagonist,
who by this stratagem conveyed his notions to those who would not have
received him had he not worn the appearance of a friend. The tumult of
those unhappy days left scarcely any man leisure to treasure up
occasional compositions; and so much were they neglected that a complete
collection is nowhere to be found.

These Mercuries were succeeded by L’Estrange’s _Observator_; and that by
Lesley’s _Rehearsal_, and perhaps by others; but hitherto nothing had
been conveyed to the people, in this commodious manner, but controversy
relating to the Church or State; of which they taught many to talk, whom
they could not teach to judge.

It has been suggested that the Royal Society was instituted soon after
the Restoration to divert the attention of the people from public
discontent. The _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ had the same tendency; they were
published at a time when two parties—loud, restless, and violent, each
with plausible declarations, and each perhaps without any distinct
termination of its views—were agitating the nation; to minds heated with
political contest they supplied cooler and more inoffensive reflections;
and it is said by Addison, in a subsequent work, that they had a
perceptible influence upon the conversation of that time, and taught the
frolic and the gay to unite merriment with decency—an effect which they
can never wholly lose while they continue to be among the first books by
which both sexes are initiated in the elegances of knowledge.

The _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ adjusted, like Casa, the unsettled practice
of daily intercourse by propriety and politeness; and, like La Bruyère,
exhibited the “Characters and Manners of the Age.”  The personages
introduced in these papers were not merely ideal; they were then known,
and conspicuous in various stations. Of the _Tatler_ this is told by
Steele in his last paper; and of the _Spectator_ by Budgell in the
preface to “Theophrastus,” a book which Addison has recommended, and
which he was suspected to have revised, if he did not write it. Of those
portraits which may be supposed to be sometimes embellished, and
sometimes aggravated, the originals are now partly known, and partly
forgotten. But to say that they united the plans of two or three eminent
writers, is to give them but a small part of their due praise; they
superadded literature and criticism, and sometimes towered far above
their predecessors; and taught, with great justness of argument and
dignity of language, the most important duties and sublime truths. All
these topics were happily varied with elegant fictions and refined
allegories, and illuminated with different changes of style and
felicities of invention.

It is recorded by Budgell, that of the characters feigned or exhibited in
the _Spectator_, the favourite of Addison was Sir Roger de Coverley, of
whom he had formed a very delicate and discriminate idea, which he would
not suffer to be violated; and therefore when Steele had shown him
innocently picking up a girl in the Temple, and taking her to a tavern,
he drew upon himself so much of his friend’s indignation that he was
forced to appease him by a promise of forbearing Sir Roger for the time
to come.

The reason which induced Cervantes to bring his hero to the grave, _para
mi sola nacio Don Quixote_, _y yo para el_, made Addison declare, with
undue vehemence of expression, that he would kill Sir Roger; being of
opinion that they were born for one another, and that any other hand
would do him wrong.

It may be doubted whether Addison ever filled up his original
delineation. He describes his knight as having his imagination somewhat
warped; but of this perversion he has made very little use. The
irregularities in Sir Roger’s conduct seem not so much the effects of a
mind deviating from the beaten track of life, by the perpetual pressure
of some overwhelming idea, as of habitual rusticity, and that negligence
which solitary grandeur naturally generates. The variable weather of the
mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time
cloud reason without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit
that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design.

To Sir Roger (who, as a country gentleman, appears to be a Tory, or, as
it is gently expressed, an adherent to the landed interest) is opposed
Sir Andrew Freeport, a new man, a wealthy merchant, zealous for the
moneyed interest, and a Whig. Of this contrariety of opinions, it is
probable more consequences were at first intended than could be produced
when the resolution was taken to exclude party from the paper. Sir Andrew
does but little, and that little seems not to have pleased Addison, who,
when he dismissed him from the club, changed his opinions. Steele had
made him, in the true spirit of unfeeling commerce, declare that he
“would not build an hospital for idle people;” but at last he buys land,
settles in the country, and builds, not a manufactory, but an hospital
for twelve old husbandmen—for men with whom a merchant has little
acquaintance, and whom he commonly considers with little kindness.

Of essays thus elegant, thus instructive, and thus commodiously
distributed, it is natural to suppose the approbation general, and the
sale numerous. I once heard it observed that the sale may be calculated
by the product of the tax, related in the last number to produce more
than twenty pounds a week, and therefore stated at one-and-twenty pounds,
or three pounds ten shillings a day: this, at a halfpenny a paper, will
give sixteen hundred and eighty for the daily number. This sale is not
great; yet this, if Swift be credited, was likely to grow less; for he
declares that the _Spectator_, whom he ridicules for his endless mention
of the _fair sex_, had before his recess wearied his readers.

The next year (1713), in which _Cato_ came upon the stage, was the grand
climacteric of Addison’s reputation. Upon the death of _Cato_ he had, as
is said, planned a tragedy in the time of his travels, and had for
several years the four first acts finished, which were shown to such as
were likely to spread their admiration. They were seen by Pope and by
Cibber, who relates that Steele, when he took back the copy, told him, in
the despicable cant of literary modesty, that, whatever spirit his friend
had shown in the composition, he doubted whether he would have courage
sufficient to expose it to the censure of a British audience. The time,
however, was now come when those who affected to think liberty in danger
affected likewise to think that a stage-play might preserve it; and
Addison was importuned, in the name of the tutelary deities of Britain,
to show his courage and his zeal by finishing his design.

To resume his work he seemed perversely and unaccountably unwilling; and
by a request, which perhaps he wished to be denied, desired Mr. Hughes to
add a fifth act. Hughes supposed him serious; and, undertaking the
supplement, brought in a few days some scenes for his examination; but he
had in the meantime gone to work himself, and produced half an act, which
he afterwards completed, but with brevity irregularly disproportionate to
the foregoing parts, like a task performed with reluctance and hurried to
its conclusion.

It may yet be doubted whether _Cato_ was made public by any change of the
author’s purpose; for Dennis charged him with raising prejudices in his
own favour by false positions of preparatory criticism, and with
_poisoning the town_ by contradicting in the _Spectator_ the established
rule of poetical justice, because his own hero, with all his virtues, was
to fall before a tyrant. The fact is certain; the motives we must guess.

Addison was, I believe, sufficiently disposed to bar all avenues against
all danger. When Pope brought him the prologue, which is properly
accommodated to the play, there were these words, “Britains, arise! be
worth like this approved;” meaning nothing more than—Britons, erect and
exalt yourselves to the approbation of public virtue. Addison was
frighted, lest he should be thought a promoter of insurrection, and the
line was liquidated to “Britains, attend.”

Now “heavily in clouds came on the day, the great, the important day,”
when Addison was to stand the hazard of the theatre. That there might,
however, be left as little hazard as was possible, on the first night
Steele, as himself relates, undertook to pack an audience. “This,” says
Pope, “had been tried for the first time in favour of the _Distressed
Mother_; and was now, with more efficacy, practised for _Cato_.”  The
danger was soon over. The whole nation was at that time on fire with
faction. The Whigs applauded every line in which liberty was mentioned,
as a satire on the Tories; and the Tories echoed every clap, to show that
the satire was unfelt. The story of Bolingbroke is well known; he called
Booth to his box, and gave him fifty guineas for defending the cause of
liberty so well against a perpetual dictator. “The Whigs,” says Pope,
“design a second present, when they can accompany it with as good a
sentence.”

The play, supported thus by the emulation of factious praise, was acted
night after night for a longer time than, I believe, the public had
allowed to any drama before; and the author, as Mrs. Porter long
afterwards related, wandered through the whole exhibition behind the
scenes with restless and unappeasable solicitude. When it was printed,
notice was given that the Queen would be pleased if it was dedicated to
her; “but, as he had designed that compliment elsewhere, he found himself
obliged,” says Tickell, “by his duty on the one hand, and his honour on
the other, to send it into the world without any dedication.”

Human happiness has always its abatements; the brightest sunshine of
success is not without a cloud. No sooner was _Cato_ offered to the
reader than it was attacked by the acute malignity of Dennis with all the
violence of angry criticism. Dennis, though equally zealous, and probably
by his temper more furious than Addison, for what they called liberty,
and though a flatterer of the Whig Ministry, could not sit quiet at a
successful play; but was eager to tell friends and enemies that they had
misplaced their admirations. The world was too stubborn for instruction;
with the fate of the censurer of Corneille’s _Cid_, his animadversions
showed his anger without effect, and _Cato_ continued to be praised.

Pope had now an opportunity of courting the friendship of Addison by
vilifying his old enemy, and could give resentment its full play without
appearing to revenge himself. He therefore published “A Narrative of the
Madness of John Dennis:” a performance which left the objections to the
play in their full force, and therefore discovered more desire of vexing
the critic than of defending the poet.

Addison, who was no stranger to the world, probably saw the selfishness
of Pope’s friendship; and, resolving that he should have the consequences
of his officiousness to himself, informed Dennis by Steele that he was
sorry for the insult; and that, whenever he should think fit to answer
his remarks, he would do it in a manner to which nothing could be
objected.

The greatest weakness of the play is in the scenes of love, which are
said by Pope to have been added to the original plan upon a subsequent
review, in compliance with the popular practice of the stage. Such an
authority it is hard to reject; yet the love is so intimately mingled
with the whole action that it cannot easily be thought extrinsic and
adventitious; for if it were taken away, what would be left? or how were
the four acts filled in the first draft?  At the publication the wits
seemed proud to pay their attendance with encomiastic verses. The best
are from an unknown hand, which will perhaps lose somewhat of their
praise when the author is known to be Jeffreys.

_Cato_ had yet other honours. It was censured as a party-play by a
scholar of Oxford; and defended in a favourable examination by Dr. Sewel.
It was translated by Salvini into Italian, and acted at Florence; and by
the Jesuits of St. Omer’s into Latin, and played by their pupils. Of this
version a copy was sent to Mr. Addison: it is to be wished that it could
be found, for the sake of comparing their version of the soliloquy with
that of Bland.

A tragedy was written on the same subject by Des Champs, a French poet,
which was translated with a criticism on the English play. But the
translator and the critic are now forgotten.

Dennis lived on unanswered, and therefore little read. Addison knew the
policy of literature too well to make his enemy important by drawing the
attention of the public upon a criticism which, though sometimes
intemperate, was often irrefragable.

While _Cato_ was upon the stage, another daily paper, called the
_Guardian_, was published by Steele. To this Addison gave great
assistance, whether occasionally or by previous engagement is not known.
The character of _Guardian_ was too narrow and too serious: it might
properly enough admit both the duties and the decencies of life, but
seemed not to include literary speculations, and was in some degree
violated by merriment and burlesque. What had the _Guardian_ of the
Lizards to do with clubs of tall or of little men, with nests of ants, or
with Strada’s prolusions?  Of this paper nothing is necessary to be said
but that it found many contributors, and that it was a continuation of
the _Spectator_, with the same elegance and the same variety, till some
unlucky sparkle from a Tory paper set Steele’s politics on fire, and wit
at once blazed into faction. He was soon too hot for neutral topics, and
quitted the _Guardian_ to write the Englishman.

The papers of Addison are marked in the _Spectator_ by one of the letters
in the name of Clio, and in the _Guardian_ by a hand; whether it was, as
Tickell pretends to think, that he was unwilling to usurp the praise of
others, or as Steele, with far greater likelihood, insinuates, that he
could not without discontent impart to others any of his own. I have
heard that his avidity did not satisfy itself with the air of renown, but
that with great eagerness he laid hold on his proportion of the profits.

Many of these papers were written with powers truly comic, with nice
discrimination of characters, and accurate observation of natural or
accidental deviations from propriety; but it was not supposed that he had
tried a comedy on the stage, till Steele after his death declared him the
author of _The Drummer_. This, however, Steele did not know to be true by
any direct testimony, for when Addison put the play into his hands, he
only told him it was the work of a “gentleman in the company;” and when
it was received, as is confessed, with cold disapprobation, he was
probably less willing to claim it. Tickell omitted it in his collection;
but the testimony of Steele, and the total silence of any other claimant,
has determined the public to assign it to Addison, and it is now printed
with other poetry. Steele carried _The Drummer_ to the play-house, and
afterwards to the press, and sold the copy for fifty guineas.

To the opinion of Steele may be added the proof supplied by the play
itself, of which the characters are such as Addison would have
delineated, and the tendency such as Addison would have promoted. That it
should have been ill received would raise wonder, did we not daily see
the capricious distribution of theatrical praise.

He was not all this time an indifferent spectator of public affairs. He
wrote, as different exigences required (in 1707), “The Present State of
the War, and the Necessity of an Augmentation;” which, however judicious,
being written on temporary topics, and exhibiting no peculiar powers,
laid hold on no attention, and has naturally sunk by its own weight into
neglect. This cannot be said of the few papers entitled the _Whig
Examiner_, in which is employed all the force of gay malevolence and
humorous satire. Of this paper, which just appeared and expired, Swift
remarks, with exultation, that “it is now down among the dead men.”  He
might well rejoice at the death of that which he could not have killed.
Every reader of every party, since personal malice is past, and the
papers which once inflamed the nation are read only as effusions of wit,
must wish for more of the _Whig Examiners_; for on no occasion was the
genius of Addison more vigorously exerted, and on none did the
superiority of his powers more evidently appear. His “Trial of Count
Tariff,” written to expose the treaty of commerce with France, lived no
longer than the question that produced it.

Not long afterwards an attempt was made to revive the _Spectator_, at a
time indeed by no means favourable to literature, when the succession of
a new family to the throne filled the nation with anxiety, discord, and
confusion; and either the turbulence of the times, or the satiety of the
readers, put a stop to the publication after an experiment of eighty
numbers, which were actually collected into an eighth volume, perhaps
more valuable than any of those that went before it. Addison produced
more than a fourth part; and the other contributors are by no means
unworthy of appearing as his associates. The time that had passed during
the suspension of the _Spectator_, though it had not lessened his power
of humour, seems to have increased his disposition to seriousness: the
proportion of his religious to his comic papers is greater than in the
former series.

The _Spectator_, from its re-commencement, was published only three times
a week; and no discriminative marks were added to the papers. To Addison,
Tickell has ascribed twenty-three. The _Spectator_ had many contributors;
and Steele, whose negligence kept him always in a hurry, when it was his
turn to furnish a paper, called loudly for the letters, of which Addison,
whose materials were more, made little use—having recourse to sketches
and hints, the product of his former studies, which he now reviewed and
completed: among these are named by Tickell the Essays on Wit, those on
the Pleasures of the Imagination, and the Criticism on Milton.

When the House of Hanover took possession of the throne, it was
reasonable to expect that the zeal of Addison would be suitably rewarded.
Before the arrival of King George, he was made Secretary to the Regency,
and was required by his office to send notice to Hanover that the Queen
was dead, and that the throne was vacant. To do this would not have been
difficult to any man but Addison, who was so overwhelmed with the
greatness of the event, and so distracted by choice of expression, that
the lords, who could not wait for the niceties of criticism, called Mr.
Southwell, a clerk in the House, and ordered him to despatch the message.
Southwell readily told what was necessary in the common style of
business, and valued himself upon having done what was too hard for
Addison. He was better qualified for the _Freeholder_, a paper which he
published twice a week, from December 23, 1715, to the middle of the next
year. This was undertaken in defence of the established Government,
sometimes with argument, and sometimes with mirth. In argument he had
many equals; but his humour was singular and matchless. Bigotry itself
must be delighted with the “Tory Fox-hunter.”  There are, however, some
strokes less elegant and less decent; such as the “Pretender’s Journal,”
in which one topic of ridicule is his poverty. This mode of abuse had
been employed by Milton against King Charles II.

                                             “Jacobœi.
   Centum exulantis viscera Marsupii regis.”

And Oldmixon delights to tell of some alderman of London that he had more
money than the exiled princes; but that which might be expected from
Milton’s savageness, or Oldmixon’s meanness, was not suitable to the
delicacy of Addison.

Steele thought the humour of the _Freeholder_ too nice and gentle for
such noisy times, and is reported to have said that the Ministry made use
of a lute, when they should have called for a trumpet.

This year (1716) he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, whom he had
solicited by a very long and anxious courtship, perhaps with behaviour
not very unlike that of Sir Roger to his disdainful widow; and who, I am
afraid, diverted herself often by playing with his passion. He is said to
have first known her by becoming tutor to her son. “He formed,” said
Tonson, “the design of getting that lady from the time when he was first
taken into the family.”  In what part of his life he obtained the
recommendation, or how long, and in what manner he lived in the family, I
know not. His advances at first were certainly timorous, but grew bolder
as his reputation and influence increased; till at last the lady was
persuaded to marry him, on terms much like those on which a Turkish
princess is espoused, to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce,
“Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.”  The marriage, if
uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness;
it neither found them nor made them equal. She always remembered her own
rank, and thought herself entitled to treat with very little ceremony the
tutor of her son. Rowe’s ballad of the “Despairing Shepherd” is said to
have been written, either before or after marriage, upon this memorable
pair; and it is certain that Addison has left behind him no encouragement
for ambitious love.

The year after (1717) he rose to his highest elevation, being made
Secretary of State. For this employment he might be justly supposed
qualified by long practice of business, and by his regular ascent through
other offices; but expectation is often disappointed; it is universally
confessed that he was unequal to the duties of his place. In the House of
Commons he could not speak, and therefore was useless to the defence of
the Government. “In the office,” says Pope, “he could not issue an order
without losing his time in quest of fine expressions.”  What he gained in
rank he lost in credit; and finding by experience his own inability, was
forced to solicit his dismission, with a pension of fifteen hundred
pounds a year. His friends palliated this relinquishment, of which both
friends and enemies knew the true reason, with an account of declining
health, and the necessity of recess and quiet. He now returned to his
vocation, and began to plan literary occupations for his future life. He
purposed a tragedy on the death of Socrates: a story of which, as Tickell
remarks, the basis is narrow, and to which I know not how love could have
been appended. There would, however, have been no want either of virtue
in the sentiments, or elegance in the language. He engaged in a nobler
work, a “Defence of the Christian Religion,” of which part was published
after his death; and he designed to have made a new poetical version of
the Psalms.

These pious compositions Pope imputed to a selfish motive, upon the
credit, as he owns, of Tonson; who, having quarrelled with Addison, and
not loving him, said that when he laid down the Secretary’s office he
intended to take orders and obtain a bishopric; “for,” said he, “I always
thought him a priest in his heart.”

That Pope should have thought this conjecture of Tonson worth
remembrance, is a proof—but indeed, so far as I have found, the only
proof—that he retained some malignity from their ancient rivalry. Tonson
pretended to guess it; no other mortal ever suspected it; and Pope might
have reflected that a man who had been Secretary of State in the Ministry
of Sunderland knew a nearer way to a bishopric than by defending religion
or translating the Psalms.

It is related that he had once a design to make an English dictionary,
and that he considered Dr. Tillotson as the writer of highest authority.
There was formerly sent to me by Mr. Locker, clerk of the Leathersellers
Company, who was eminent for curiosity and literature, a collection of
examples selected from Tillotson’s works, as Locker said, by Addison. It
came too late to be of use, so I inspected it but slightly, and remember
it indistinctly. I thought the passages too short. Addison, however, did
not conclude his life in peaceful studies, but relapsed, when he was near
his end, to a political dispute.

It so happened that (1718–19) a controversy was agitated with great
vehemence between those friends of long continuance, Addison and Steele.
It may be asked, in the language of Homer, what power or what cause
should set them at variance. The subject of their dispute was of great
importance. The Earl of Sunderland proposed an Act, called the “Peerage
Bill;” by which the number of Peers should be fixed, and the King
restrained from any new creation of nobility, unless when an old family
should be extinct. To this the Lords would naturally agree; and the King,
who was yet little acquainted with his own prerogative, and, as is now
well known, almost indifferent to the possessions of the Crown, had been
persuaded to consent. The only difficulty was found among the Commons,
who were not likely to approve the perpetual exclusion of themselves and
their posterity. The Bill, therefore, was eagerly opposed, and, among
others, by Sir Robert Walpole, whose speech was published.

The Lords might think their dignity diminished by improper advancements,
and particularly by the introduction of twelve new Peers at once, to
produce a majority of Tories in the last reign: an act of authority
violent enough, yet certainly legal, and by no means to be compared with
that contempt of national right with which some time afterwards, by the
instigation of Whiggism, the Commons, chosen by the people for three
years, chose themselves for seven. But, whatever might be the disposition
of the Lords, the people had no wish to increase their power. The
tendency of the Bill, as Steele observed in a letter to the Earl of
Oxford, was to introduce an aristocracy: for a majority in the House of
Lords, so limited, would have been despotic and irresistible.

To prevent this subversion of the ancient establishment, Steele, whose
pen readily seconded his political passions, endeavoured to alarm the
nation by a pamphlet called “The Plebeian.”  To this an answer was
published by Addison, under the title of “The Old Whig,” in which it is
not discovered that Steele was then known to be the advocate for the
Commons. Steele replied by a second “Plebeian;” and, whether by ignorance
or by courtesy, confined himself to his question, without any personal
notice of his opponent. Nothing hitherto was committed against the laws
of friendship or proprieties of decency; but controvertists cannot long
retain their kindness for each other. The “Old Whig” answered “The
Plebeian,” and could not forbear some contempt of “little _Dicky_, whose
trade it was to write pamphlets.”  Dicky, however, did not lose his
settled veneration for his friend, but contented himself with quoting
some lines of _Cato_, which were at once detection and reproof. The Bill
was laid aside during that session, and Addison died before the next, in
which its commitment was rejected by two hundred and sixty-five to one
hundred and seventy-seven.

Every reader surely must regret that these two illustrious friends, after
so many years passed in confidence and endearment, in unity of interest,
conformity of opinion, and fellowship of study, should finally part in
acrimonious opposition. Such a controversy was “bellum plusquam
_civile_,” as Lucan expresses it. Why could not faction find other
advocates?  But among the uncertainties of the human state, we are doomed
to number the instability of friendship. Of this dispute I have little
knowledge but from the “Biographia Britannica.”  “The Old Whig” is not
inserted in Addison’s works: nor is it mentioned by Tickell in his Life;
why it was omitted, the biographers doubtless give the true reason—the
fact was too recent, and those who had been heated in the contention were
not yet cool.

The necessity of complying with times, and of sparing persons, is the
great impediment of biography. History may be formed from permanent
monuments and records: but lives can only be written from personal
knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost
for ever. What is known can seldom be immediately told; and when it might
be told, it is no longer known. The delicate features of the mind, the
nice discriminations of character, and the minute peculiarities of
conduct, are soon obliterated; and it is surely better that caprice,
obstinacy, frolic, and folly, however they might delight in the
description, should be silently forgotten, than that, by wanton merriment
and unseasonable detection, a pang should be given to a widow, a
daughter, a brother, or a friend. As the process of these narratives is
now bringing me among my contemporaries, I begin to feel myself “walking
upon ashes under which the fire is not extinguished,” and coming to the
time of which it will be proper rather to say “nothing that is false,
than all that is true.”

The end of this useful life was now approaching. Addison had for some
time been oppressed by shortness of breath, which was now aggravated by a
dropsy; and, finding his danger pressing, he prepared to die conformably
to his own precepts and professions. During this lingering decay, he
sent, as Pope relates, a message by the Earl of Warwick to Mr. Gay,
desiring to see him. Gay, who had not visited him for some time before,
obeyed the summons, and found himself received with great kindness. The
purpose for which the interview had been solicited was then discovered.
Addison told him that he had injured him; but that, if he recovered, he
would recompense him. What the injury was he did not explain, nor did Gay
ever know; but supposed that some preferment designed for him had, by
Addison’s intervention, been withheld.

Lord Warwick was a young man, of very irregular life, and perhaps of
loose opinions. Addison, for whom he did not want respect, had very
diligently endeavoured to reclaim him, but his arguments and
expostulations had no effect. One experiment, however, remained to be
tried; when he found his life near its end, he directed the young lord to
be called, and when he desired with great tenderness to hear his last
injunctions, told him, “I have sent for you that you may see how a
Christian can die.”  What effect this awful scene had on the earl, I know
not; he likewise died himself in a short time.

In Tickell’s excellent Elegy on his friend are these lines:—

   “He taught us how to live; and, oh! too high
   The price of knowledge, taught us how to die”—

in which he alludes, as he told Dr. Young, to this moving interview.

Having given directions to Mr. Tickell for the publication of his works,
and dedicated them on his death-bed to his friend Mr. Craggs, he died
June 17, 1719, at Holland House, leaving no child but a daughter.

Of his virtue it is a sufficient testimony that the resentment of party
has transmitted no charge of any crime. He was not one of those who are
praised only after death; for his merit was so generally acknowledged
that Swift, having observed that his election passed without a contest,
adds that if he proposed himself for King he would hardly have been
refused. His zeal for his party did not extinguish his kindness for the
merit of his opponents; when he was Secretary in Ireland, he refused to
intermit his acquaintance with Swift. Of his habits or external manners,
nothing is so often mentioned as that timorous or sullen taciturnity,
which his friends called modesty by too mild a name. Steele mentions with
great tenderness “that remarkable bashfulness which is a cloak that hides
and muffles merit;” and tells us “that his abilities were covered only by
modesty, which doubles the beauties which are seen, and gives credit and
esteem to all that are concealed.”  Chesterfield affirms that “Addison
was the most timorous and awkward man that he ever saw.”  And Addison,
speaking of his own deficiency in conversation, used to say of himself
that, with respect to intellectual wealth, “he could draw bills for a
thousand pounds, though he had not a guinea in his pocket.”  That he
wanted current coin for ready payment, and by that want was often
obstructed and distressed; and that he was often oppressed by an improper
and ungraceful timidity, every testimony concurs to prove; but
Chesterfield’s representation is doubtless hyperbolical. That man cannot
be supposed very unexpert in the arts of conversation and practice of
life who, without fortune or alliance, by his usefulness and dexterity
became Secretary of State, and who died at forty-seven, after having not
only stood long in the highest rank of wit and literature, but filled one
of the most important offices of State.

The time in which he lived had reason to lament his obstinacy of silence;
“for he was,” says Steele, “above all men in that talent called humour,
and enjoyed it in such perfection that I have often reflected, after a
night spent with him apart from all the world, that I had had the
pleasure of conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and
Catullus, who had all their wit and nature, heightened with humour more
exquisite and delightful than any other man ever possessed.”  This is the
fondness of a friend; let us hear what is told us by a rival. “Addison’s
conversation,” says Pope, “had something in it more charming than I have
found in any other man. But this was only when familiar: before
strangers, or perhaps a single stranger, he preserved his dignity by a
stiff silence.”  This modesty was by no means inconsistent with a very
high opinion of his own merit. He demanded to be the first name in modern
wit; and, with Steele to echo him, used to depreciate Dryden, whom Pope
and Congreve defended against them. There is no reason to doubt that he
suffered too much pain from the prevalence of Pope’s poetical reputation;
nor is it without strong reason suspected that by some disingenuous acts
he endeavoured to obstruct it; Pope was not the only man whom he
insidiously injured, though the only man of whom he could be afraid. His
own powers were such as might have satisfied him with conscious
excellence. Of very extensive learning he has indeed given no proofs. He
seems to have had small acquaintance with the sciences, and to have read
little except Latin and French; but of the Latin poets his “Dialogues on
Medals” show that he had perused the works with great diligence and
skill. The abundance of his own mind left him little indeed of
adventitious sentiments; his wit always could suggest what the occasion
demanded. He had read with critical eyes the important volume of human
life, and knew the heart of man, from the depths of stratagem to the
surface of affectation. What he knew he could easily communicate. “This,”
says Steele, “was particular in this writer—that when he had taken his
resolution, or made his plan for what he designed to write, he would walk
about a room and dictate it into language with as much freedom and ease
as any one could write it down, and attend to the coherence and grammar
of what he dictated.”

Pope, who can be less suspected of favouring his memory, declares that he
wrote very fluently, but was slow and scrupulous in correcting; that many
of his _Spectators_ were written very fast, and sent immediately to the
press; and that it seemed to be for his advantage not to have time for
much revisal. “He would alter,” says Pope, “anything to please his
friends before publication, but would not re-touch his pieces afterwards;
and I believe not one word of _Cato_ to which I made an objection was
suffered to stand.”

The last line of _Cato_ is Pope’s, having been originally written—

   “And oh! ’twas this that ended Cato’s life.”

Pope might have made more objections to the six concluding lines. In the
first couplet the words “from hence” are improper; and the second line is
taken from Dryden’s Virgil. Of the next couplet, the first verse, being
included in the second, is therefore useless; and in the third _Discord_
is made to produce _Strife_.

Of the course of Addison’s familiar day, before his marriage, Pope has
given a detail. He had in the house with him Budgell, and perhaps
Philips. His chief companions were Steele, Budgell, Philips [Ambrose],
Carey, Davenant, and Colonel Brett. With one or other of these he always
breakfasted. He studied all morning; then dined at a tavern; and went
afterwards to Button’s. Button had been a servant in the Countess of
Warwick’s family, who, under the patronage of Addison, kept a
coffee-house on the south side of Russell Street, about two doors from
Covent Garden. Here it was that the wits of that time used to assemble.
It is said when Addison had suffered any vexation from the countess, he
withdrew the company from Button’s house. From the coffee-house he went
again to a tavern, where he often sat late, and drank too much wine. In
the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and
bashfulness for confidence. It is not unlikely that Addison was first
seduced to excess by the manumission which he obtained from the servile
timidity of his sober hours. He that feels oppression from the presence
of those to whom he knows himself superior will desire to set loose his
powers of conversation; and who that ever asked succours from Bacchus was
able to preserve himself from being enslaved by his auxiliary?

Among those friends it was that Addison displayed the elegance of his
colloquial accomplishments, which may easily be supposed such as Pope
represents them. The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an
evening in his company, declared that he was a parson in a tie-wig, can
detract little from his character; he was always reserved to strangers,
and was not incited to uncommon freedom by a character like that of
Mandeville.

From any minute knowledge of his familiar manners the intervention of
sixty years has now debarred us. Steele once promised Congreve and the
public a complete description of his character; but the promises of
authors are like the vows of lovers. Steele thought no more on his
design, or thought on it with anxiety that at last disgusted him, and
left his friend in the hands of Tickell.

One slight lineament of his character Swift has preserved. It was his
practice, when he found any man invincibly wrong, to flatter his opinions
by acquiescence, and sink him yet deeper in absurdity. This artifice of
mischief was admired by Stella; and Swift seems to approve her
admiration. His works will supply some information. It appears, from the
various pictures of the world, that, with all his bashfulness, he had
conversed with many distinct classes of men, had surveyed their ways with
very diligent observation, and marked with great acuteness the effects of
different modes of life. He was a man in whose presence nothing
reprehensible was out of danger; quick in discerning whatever was wrong
or ridiculous, and not unwilling to expose it. “There are,” says Steele,
“in his writings many oblique strokes upon some of the wittiest men of
the age.”  His delight was more to excite merriment than detestation; and
he detects follies rather than crimes. If any judgment be made from his
books of his moral character, nothing will be found but purity and
excellence. Knowledge of mankind, indeed, less extensive than that of
Addison, will show that to write, and to live, are very different. Many
who praise virtue, do no more than praise it. Yet it is reasonable to
believe that Addison’s professions and practice were at no great
variance, since amidst that storm of faction in which most of his life
was passed, though his station made him conspicuous, and his activity
made him formidable, the character given him by his friends was never
contradicted by his enemies. Of those with whom interest or opinion
united him he had not only the esteem, but the kindness; and of others
whom the violence of opposition drove against him, though he might lose
the love, he retained the reverence.

It is justly observed by Tickell that he employed wit on the side of
virtue and religion. He not only made the proper use of wit himself, but
taught it to others; and from his time it has been generally subservient
to the cause of reason and of truth. He has dissipated the prejudice that
had long connected gaiety with vice, and easiness of manners with laxity
of principles. He has restored virtue to its dignity, and taught
innocence not to be ashamed. This is an elevation of literary character
“above all Greek, above all Roman fame.”  No greater felicity can genius
attain than that of having purified intellectual pleasure, separated
mirth from indecency, and wit from licentiousness; of having taught a
succession of writers to bring elegance and gaiety to the aid of
goodness; and, if I may use expressions yet more awful, of having “turned
many to righteousness.”

Addison, in his life and for some time afterwards, was considered by a
greater part of readers as supremely excelling both in poetry and
criticism. Part of his reputation may be probably ascribed to the
advancement of his fortune; when, as Swift observes, he became a
statesman, and saw poets waiting at his levée, it was no wonder that
praise was accumulated upon him. Much likewise may be more honourably
ascribed to his personal character: he who, if he had claimed it, might
have obtained the diadem, was not likely to be denied the laurel. But
time quickly puts an end to artificial and accidental fame; and Addison
is to pass through futurity protected only by his genius. Every name
which kindness or interest once raised too high is in danger, lest the
next age should, by the vengeance of criticism, sink it in the same
proportion. A great writer has lately styled him “an indifferent poet,
and a worse critic.”  His poetry is first to be considered; of which it
must be confessed that it has not often those felicities of diction which
give lustre to sentiments, or that vigour of sentiment that animates
diction: there is little of ardour, vehemence, or transport; there is
very rarely the awfulness of grandeur, and not very often the splendour
of elegance. He thinks justly, but he thinks faintly. This is his general
character; to which, doubtless, many single passages will furnish
exception. Yet, if he seldom reaches supreme excellence, he rarely sinks
into dulness, and is still more rarely entangled in absurdity. He did not
trust his powers enough to be negligent. There is in most of his
compositions a calmness and equability, deliberate and cautious,
sometimes with little that delights, but seldom with anything that
offends. Of this kind seem to be his poems to Dryden, to Somers, and to
the King. His ode on St. Cecilia has been imitated by Pope, and has
something in it of Dryden’s vigour. Of his Account of the English Poets
he used to speak as a “poor thing;” but it is not worse than his usual
strain. He has said, not very judiciously, in his character of Waller—

   “Thy verse could show even Cromwell’s innocence,
   And compliment the storms that bore him hence.
   Oh! had thy Muse not come an age too soon,
   But seen great Nassau on the British throne,
   How had his triumph glittered in thy page!”

What is this but to say that he who could compliment Cromwell had been
the proper poet for King William?  Addison, however, printed the piece.

The Letter from Italy has been always praised, but has never been praised
beyond its merit. It is more correct, with less appearance of labour, and
more elegant, with less ambition of ornament, than any other of his
poems. There is, however, one broken metaphor, of which notice may
properly be taken:—

                           “Fired with that name—
   I bridle in my struggling Muse with pain,
   That longs to launch into a nobler strain.”

To _bridle a goddess_ is no very delicate idea; but why must she be
_bridled_? because she _longs to launch_; an act which was never hindered
by a _bridle_: and whither will she _launch_? into a _nobler strain_. She
is in the first line a _horse_, in the second a _boat_; and the care of
the poet is to keep his _horse_ or his _boat_ from _singing_.

The next composition is the far-famed “Campaign,” which Dr. Warton has
termed a “Gazette in Rhyme,” with harshness not often used by the
good-nature of his criticism. Before a censure so severe is admitted, let
us consider that war is a frequent subject of poetry, and then inquire
who has described it with more justice and force. Many of our own writers
tried their powers upon this year of victory: yet Addison’s is
confessedly the best performance; his poem is the work of a man not
blinded by the dust of learning; his images are not borrowed merely from
books. The superiority which he confers upon his hero is not personal
prowess and “mighty bone,” but deliberate intrepidity, a calm command of
his passions, and the power of consulting his own mind in the midst of
danger. The rejection and contempt of fiction is rational and manly. It
may be observed that the last line is imitated by Pope:—

   “Marlb’rough’s exploits appear divinely bright—
   Raised of themselves their genuine charms they boast,
   And those that paint them truest, praise them most.”

This Pope had in his thoughts, but, not knowing how to use what was not
his own, he spoiled the thought when he had borrowed it:—

   “The well-sung woes shall soothe my pensive ghost;
   He best can paint them who shall feel them most.”

Martial exploits may be _painted_; perhaps _woes_ may be _painted_; but
they are surely not _painted_ by being _well sung_: it is not easy to
paint in song, or to sing in colours.

No passage in the “Campaign” has been more often mentioned than the
simile of the angel, which is said in the _Tatler_ to be “one of the
noblest thoughts that ever entered into the heart of man,” and is
therefore worthy of attentive consideration. Let it be first inquired
whether it be a simile. A poetical simile is the discovery of likeness
between two actions in their general nature dissimilar, or of causes
terminating by different operations in some resemblance of effect. But
the mention of another like consequence from a like cause, or of a like
performance by a like agency, is not a simile, but an exemplification. It
is not a simile to say that the Thames waters fields, as the Po waters
fields; or that as Hecla vomits flames in Iceland, so Ætna vomits flames
in Sicily. When Horace says of Pindar that he pours his violence and
rapidity of verse, as a river swollen with rain rushes from the mountain;
or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations,
as the bee wanders to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a
simile: the mind is impressed with the resemblance of things generally
unlike, as unlike as intellect and body. But if Pindar had been described
as writing with the copiousness and grandeur of Homer, or Horace had told
that he reviewed and finished his own poetry with the same care as
Isocrates polished his orations, instead of similitude, he would have
exhibited almost identity; he would have given the same portraits with
different names. In the poem now examined, when the English are
represented as gaining a fortified pass by repetition of attack and
perseverance of resolution, their obstinacy of courage and vigour of
onset are well illustrated by the sea that breaks, with incessant
battery, the dykes of Holland. This is a simile. But when Addison, having
celebrated the beauty of Marlborough’s person, tells us that “Achilles
thus was formed of every grace,” here is no simile, but a mere
exemplification. A simile may be compared to lines converging at a point,
and is more excellent as the lines approach from greater distance: an
exemplification may be considered as two parallel lines, which run on
together without approximation, never far separated, and never joined.

Marlborough is so like the angel in the poem that the action of both is
almost the same, and performed by both in the same manner. Marlborough
“teaches the battle to rage;” the angel “directs the storm:”  Marlborough
is “unmoved in peaceful thought;” the angel is “calm and serene:”
Marlborough stands “unmoved amidst the shock of hosts;” the angel rides
“calm in the whirlwind.”  The lines on Marlborough are just and noble,
but the simile gives almost the same images a second time. But perhaps
this thought, though hardly a simile, was remote from vulgar conceptions,
and required great labour and research, or dexterity of application. Of
this Dr. Madden, a name which Ireland ought to honour, once gave me his
opinion. “If I had set,” said he, “ten schoolboys to write on the battle
of Blenheim, and eight had brought me the angel, I should not have been
surprised.”

The opera of _Rosamond_, though it is seldom mentioned, is one of the
first of Addison’s compositions. The subject is well chosen, the fiction
is pleasing, and the praise of Marlborough, for which the scene gives an
opportunity, is, what perhaps every human excellence must be, the product
of good luck improved by genius. The thoughts are sometimes great, and
sometimes tender; the versification is easy and gay. There is doubtless
some advantage in the shortness of the lines, which there is little
temptation to load with expletive epithets. The dialogue seems commonly
better than the songs. The two comic characters of Sir Trusty and
Grideline, though of no great value, are yet such as the poet intended.
Sir Trusty’s account of the death of Rosamond is, I think, too grossly
absurd. The whole drama is airy and elegant; engaging in its process, and
pleasing in its conclusion. If Addison had cultivated the lighter parts
of poetry, he would probably have excelled.

The tragedy of _Cato_, which, contrary to the rule observed in selecting
the works of other poets, has by the weight of its character forced its
way into the late collection, is unquestionably the noblest production of
Addison’s genius. Of a work so much read, it is difficult to say anything
new. About things on which the public thinks long, it commonly attains to
think right; and of _Cato_ it has been not unjustly determined that it is
rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just
sentiments in elegant language than a representation of natural
affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Nothing
here “excites or assuages emotion:” here is “no magical power of raising
phantastic terror or wild anxiety.”  The events are expected without
solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we
have no care; we consider not what they are doing, or what they are
suffering; we wish only to know what they have to say. _Cato_ is a being
above our solicitude; a man of whom the gods take care, and whom we leave
to their care with heedless confidence. To the rest neither gods nor men
can have much attention; for there is not one amongst them that strongly
attracts either affection or esteem. But they are made the vehicles of
such sentiments and such expression that there is scarcely a scene in the
play which the reader does not wish to impress upon his memory.

When _Cato_ was shown to Pope, he advised the author to print it, without
any theatrical exhibition, supposing that it would be read more
favourably than heard. Addison declared himself of the same opinion, but
urged the importunity of his friends for its appearance on the stage. The
emulation of parties made it successful beyond expectation; and its
success has introduced or confirmed among us the use of dialogue too
declamatory, of unaffecting elegance, and chill philosophy. The
universality of applause, however it might quell the censure of common
mortals, had no other effect than to harden Dennis in fixed dislike; but
his dislike was not merely capricious. He found and showed many faults;
he showed them indeed with anger, but he found them indeed with
acuteness, such as ought to rescue his criticism from oblivion; though,
at last, it will have no other life than it derives from the work which
it endeavours to oppress. Why he pays no regard to the opinion of the
audience, he gives his reason by remarking that—

“A deference is to be paid to a general applause when it appears that the
applause is natural and spontaneous; but that little regard is to be had
to it when it is affected or artificial. Of all the tragedies which in
his memory have had vast and violent runs, not one has been excellent,
few have been tolerable, most have been scandalous. When a poet writes a
tragedy who knows he has judgment, and who feels he has genius, that poet
presumes upon his own merit, and scorns to make a cabal. That people come
coolly to the representation of such a tragedy, without any violent
expectation, or delusive imagination, or invincible prepossession; that
such an audience is liable to receive the impressions which the poem
shall naturally make on them, and to judge by their own reason, and their
own judgments; and that reason and judgment are calm and serene, not
formed by nature to make proselytes, and to control and lord it over the
imagination of others. But that when an author writes a tragedy who knows
he has neither genius nor judgment, he has recourse to the making a
party, and he endeavours to make up in industry what is wanting in
talent, and to supply by poetical craft the absence of poetical art: that
such an author is humbly contented to raise men’s passions by a plot
without doors, since he despairs of doing it by that which he brings upon
the stage. That party and passion, and prepossession, are clamorous and
tumultuous things, and so much the more clamorous and tumultuous by how
much the more erroneous: that they domineer and tyrannise over the
imaginations of persons who want judgment, and sometimes too of those who
have it, and, like a fierce and outrageous torrent, bear down all
opposition before them.”

He then condemns the neglect of poetical justice, which is one of his
favourite principles:—

“’Tis certainly the duty of every tragic poet, by the exact distribution
of poetical justice, to imitate the Divine Dispensation, and to inculcate
a particular Providence. ’Tis true, indeed, upon the stage of the world,
the wicked sometimes prosper and the guiltless suffer; but that is
permitted by the Governor of the World, to show, from the attribute of
His infinite justice, that there is a compensation in futurity, to prove
the immortality of the human soul, and the certainty of future rewards
and punishments. But the poetical persons in tragedy exist no longer than
the reading or the representation; the whole extent of their enmity is
circumscribed by those; and therefore, during that reading or
representation, according to their merits or demerits, they must be
punished or rewarded. If this is not done, there is no impartial
distribution of poetical justice, no instructive lecture of a particular
Providence, and no imitation of the Divine Dispensation. And yet the
author of this tragedy does not only run counter to this, in the fate of
his principal character; but everywhere, throughout it, makes virtue
suffer, and vice triumph: for not only Cato is vanquished by Cæsar, but
the treachery and perfidiousness of Syphax prevail over the honest
simplicity and the credulity of Juba; and the sly subtlety and
dissimulation of Portius over the generous frankness and open-heartedness
of Marcus.”

Whatever pleasure there may be in seeing crimes punished and virtue
rewarded, yet, since wickedness often prospers in real life, the poet is
certainly at liberty to give it prosperity on the stage. For if poetry
has an imitation of reality, how are its laws broken by exhibiting the
world in its true form?  The stage may sometimes gratify our wishes; but
if it be truly the “_mirror of life_,” it ought to show us sometimes what
we are to expect.

Dennis objects to the characters that they are not natural or reasonable;
but as heroes and heroines are not beings that are seen every day, it is
hard to find upon what principles their conduct shall be tried. It is,
however, not useless to consider what he says of the manner in which Cato
receives the account of his son’s death:—

“Nor is the grief of Cato, in the fourth act, one jot more in nature than
that of his son and Lucia in the third. Cato receives the news of his
son’s death, not only with dry eyes, but with a sort of satisfaction; and
in the same page sheds tears for the calamity of his country, and does
the same thing in the next page upon the bare apprehension of the danger
of his friends. Now, since the love of one’s country is the love of one’s
countrymen, as I have shown upon another occasion, I desire to ask these
questions:—Of all our countrymen, which do we love most, those whom we
know, or those whom we know not?  And of those whom we know, which do we
cherish most, our friends or our enemies?  And of our friends, which are
the dearest to us, those who are related to us, or those who are not?
And of all our relations, for which have we most tenderness, for those
who are near to us, or for those who are remote?  And of our near
relations, which are the nearest, and consequently the dearest to us, our
offspring, or others?  Our offspring, most certainly; as Nature, or in
other words Providence, has wisely contrived for the preservation of
mankind. Now, does it not follow, from what has been said, that for a man
to receive the news of his son’s death with dry eyes, and to weep at the
same time for the calamities of his country, is a wretched affectation
and a miserable inconsistency?  Is not that, in plain English, to receive
with dry eyes the news of the deaths of those for whose sake our country
is a name so dear to us, and at the same time to shed tears for those for
whose sakes our country is not a name so dear to us?”

But this formidable assailant is less resistible when he attacks the
probability of the action and the reasonableness of the plan. Every
critical reader must remark that Addison has, with a scrupulosity almost
unexampled on the English stage, confined himself in time to a single
day, and in place to rigorous unity. The scene never changes, and the
whole action of the play passes in the great hall of Cato’s house at
Utica. Much, therefore, is done in the hall for which any other place had
been more fit; and this impropriety affords Dennis many hints of
merriment and opportunities of triumph. The passage is long; but as such
disquisitions are not common, and the objections are skilfully formed and
vigorously urged, those who delight in critical controversy will not
think it tedious:—

“Upon the departure of Portius, Sempronius makes but one soliloquy, and
immediately in comes Syphax, and then the two politicians are at it
immediately. They lay their heads together, with their snuff-boxes in
their hands, as Mr. Bayes has it, and feague it away. But, in the midst
of that wise scene, Syphax seems to give a seasonable caution to
Sempronius:—

   “‘_Syph_. But is it true, Sempronius, that your senate
   Is called together?  Gods! thou must be cautious;
   Cato has piercing eyes.’

“There is a great deal of caution shown, indeed, in meeting in a
governor’s own hall to carry on their plot against him. Whatever opinion
they have of his eyes, I suppose they have none of his ears, or they
would never have talked at this foolish rate so near:—

   “‘Gods! thou must be cautious.’

Oh! yes, very cautious: for if Cato should overhear you, and turn you off
for politicians, Cæsar would never take you.

“When Cato, Act II., turns the senators out of the hall upon pretence of
acquainting Juba with the result of their debates, he appears to me to do
a thing which is neither reasonable nor civil. Juba might certainly have
better been made acquainted with the result of that debate in some
private apartment of the palace. But the poet was driven upon this
absurdity to make way for another, and that is to give Juba an
opportunity to demand Marcia of her father. But the quarrel and rage of
Juba and Syphax, in the same act; the invectives of Syphax against the
Romans and Cato; the advice that he gives Juba in her father’s hall to
bear away Marcia by force; and his brutal and clamorous rage upon his
refusal, and at a time when Cato was scarcely out of sight, and perhaps
not out of hearing, at least some of his guards or domestics must
necessarily be supposed to be within hearing; is a thing that is so far
from being probable, that it is hardly possible.

“Sempronius, in the second act, comes back once more in the same morning
to the governor’s hall to carry on the conspiracy with Syphax against the
governor, his country, and his family: which is so stupid that it is
below the wisdom of the O—s, the Macs, and the Teagues; even Eustace
Commins himself would never have gone to Justice-hall to have conspired
against the Government. If officers at Portsmouth should lay their heads
together in order to the carrying off J— G—’s niece or daughter, would
they meet in J— G—’s hall to carry on that conspiracy?  There would be no
necessity for their meeting there—at least, till they came to the
execution of their plot—because there would be other places to meet in.
There would be no probability that they should meet there, because there
would be places more private and more commodious. Now there ought to be
nothing in a tragical action but what is necessary or probable.

“But treason is not the only thing that is carried on in this hall; that,
and love and philosophy take their turns in it, without any manner of
necessity or probability occasioned by the action, as duly and as
regularly, without interrupting one another, as if there were a triple
league between them, and a mutual agreement that each should give place
to and make way for the other in a due and orderly succession.

“We now come to the third act. Sempronius, in this act, comes into the
governor’s hall with the leaders of the mutiny; but as soon as Cato is
gone, Sempronius, who but just before had acted like an unparalleled
knave, discovers himself, like an egregious fool, to be an accomplice in
the conspiracy.

   “‘_Semp_. Know, villains, when such paltry slaves presume
   To mix in treason, if the plot succeeds,
   They’re thrown neglected by; but, if it fails,
   They’re sure to die like dogs, as you shall do.
   Here, take these factious monsters, drag them forth
   To sudden death.’

“’Tis true, indeed, the second leader says there are none there but
friends; but is that possible at such a juncture?  Can a parcel of rogues
attempt to assassinate the governor of a town of war, in his own house,
in midday, and, after they are discovered and defeated, can there be none
near them but friends?  Is it not plain, from these words of Sempronius—

   “‘Here, take these factious monsters, drag them forth
   To sudden death—’

and from the entrance of the guards upon the word of command, that those
guards were within ear-shot?  Behold Sempronius, then, palpably
discovered. How comes it to pass, then, that instead of being hanged up
with the rest, he remains secure in the governor’s hall, and there
carries on his conspiracy against the Government, the third time in the
same day, with his old comrade Syphax, who enters at the same time that
the guards are carrying away the leaders, big with the news of the defeat
of Sempronius?—though where he had his intelligence so soon is difficult
to imagine. And now the reader may expect a very extraordinary scene.
There is not abundance of spirit, indeed, nor a great deal of passion,
but there is wisdom more than enough to supply all defects.

   “‘_Syph_. Our first design, my friend, has proved abortive;
   Still there remains an after-game to play:
   My troops are mounted; their Numidian steeds
   Snuff up the winds, and long to scour the desert.
   Let but Sempronius lead us in our flight,
   We’ll force the gate where Marcus keeps his guard,
   And hew down all that would oppose our passage;
   A day will bring us into Cæsar’s camp.

      _Semp_. Confusion! I have failed of half my purpose;
   Marcia, the charming Marcia’s left behind.’

Well, but though he tells us the half-purpose he has failed of, he does
not tell us the half that he has carried. But what does he mean by

   “‘Marcia, the charming Marcia’s left behind’?

He is now in her own house! and we have neither seen her nor heard of her
anywhere else since the play began. But now let us hear Syphax:—

   “‘What hinders, then, but that you find her out,
   And hurry her away by manly force?’

But what does old Syphax mean by finding her out?  They talk as if she
were as hard to be found as a hare in a frosty morning.

   “‘_Semp_. But how to gain admission?’

Oh! she is found out then, it seems.

   “‘But how to gain admission? for access
   Is giv’n to none but Juba and her brothers.’

But, raillery apart, why access to Juba?  For he was owned and received
as a lover neither by the father nor by the daughter. Well, but let that
pass. Syphax puts Sempronius out of pain immediately; and, being a
Numidian, abounding in wiles, supplies him with a stratagem for admission
that, I believe, is a _nonpareil_.

   “‘_Syph_. Thou shalt have Juba’s dress, and Juba’s guards;
   The doors will open when Numidia’s prince
   Seems to appear before them.’

“Sempronius is, it seems, to pass for Juba in full day at Cato’s house,
where they were both so very well known, by having Juba’s dress and his
guards; as if one of the Marshals of France could pass for the Duke of
Bavaria at noonday, at Versailles, by having his dress and liveries. But
how does Syphax pretend to help Sempronius to young Juba’s dress?  Does
he serve him in a double capacity, as general and master of his wardrobe?
But why Juba’s guards?  For the devil of any guards has Juba appeared
with yet. Well, though this is a mighty politic invention, yet, methinks,
they might have done without it: for, since the advice that Syphax gave
to Sempronius was

   “‘To hurry her away by manly force,’

in my opinion the shortest and likeliest way of coming at the lady was by
demolishing, instead of putting on an impertinent disguise to circumvent
two or three slaves. But Sempronius, it seems, is of another opinion. He
extols to the skies the invention of old Syphax:—

   “‘_Semp_. Heavens! what a thought was there!’

“Now, I appeal to the reader if I have not been as good as my word. Did I
not tell him that I would lay before him a very wise scene?

“But now let us lay before the reader that part of the scenery of the
fourth act which may show the absurdities which the author has run into,
through the indiscreet observance of the unity of place. I do not
remember that Aristotle has said anything expressly concerning the unity
of place. ’Tis true, implicitly he has said enough in the rules which he
has laid down for the chorus. For by making the chorus an essential part
of tragedy, and by bringing it on the stage immediately after the opening
of the scene, and retaining it there till the very catastrophe, he has so
determined and fixed the place of action that it was impossible for an
author on the Grecian stage to break through that unity. I am of opinion
that if a modern tragic poet can preserve the amity of place, without
destroying the probability of the incidents, ’tis always best for him to
do it; because by the preservation of that unity, as we have taken notice
above, he adds grace and clearness and comeliness to the representation.
But since there are no express rules about it, and we are under no
compulsion to keep it, since we have no chorus as the Grecian poet had;
if it cannot be preserved without rendering the greater part of the
incidents unreasonable and absurd, and perhaps sometimes monstrous, ’tis
certainly better to break it.

“Now comes bully Sempronius, comically accoutred and equipped with his
Numidian dress and his Numidian guards. Let the reader attend to him with
all his ears, for the words of the wise are precious:—

   “‘_Semp_. The deer is lodged; I’ve tracked her to her covert.’

“Now I would fain know why this deer is said to be lodged, since we have
not heard one word since the play began of her being at all out of
harbour: and if we consider the discourse with which she and Lucia begin
the act, we have reason to believe that they had hardly been talking of
such matters in the street. However, to pleasure Sempronius, let us
suppose, for once, that the deer is lodged:—

   “‘The deer is lodged; I’ve tracked her to her covert.’

“If he had seen her in the open field, what occasion had he to track her
when he had so many Numidian dogs at his heels, which, with one halloo,
he might have set upon her haunches?  If he did not see her in the open
field, how could he possibly track her?  If he had seen her in the
street, why did he not set upon her in the street, since through the
street she must be carried at last?  Now here, instead of having his
thoughts upon his business, and upon the present danger; instead of
meditating and contriving how he shall pass with his mistress through the
southern gate, where her brother Marcus is upon the guard, and where he
would certainly prove an impediment to him (which is the Roman word for
the _baggage_); instead of doing this, Sempronius is entertaining himself
with whimsies:—

   “‘_Semp_. How will the young Numidian rave to see
   His mistress lost!  If aught could glad my soul
   Beyond th’ enjoyment of so bright a prize,
   ’Twould be to torture that young, gay barbarian.
   But hark! what noise?  Death to my hopes! ’tis he,
   ’Tis Juba’s self!  There is but one way left!
   He must be murdered, and a passage cut
   Through those his guards.’

“Pray, what are ‘those guards’?  I thought at present that Juba’s guards
had been Sempronius’s tools, and had been dangling after his heels.

“But now let us sum up all these absurdities together. Sempronius goes at
noon-day, in Juba’s clothes and with Juba’s guards, to Cato’s palace, in
order to pass for Juba, in a place where they were both so very well
known: he meets Juba there, and resolves to murder him with his own
guards. Upon the guards appearing a little bashful, he threatens them:—

   “‘Hah! dastards, do you tremble?
   Or act like men; or, by yon azure heav’n!’—

“But the guards still remaining restive, Sempronius himself attacks Juba,
while each of the guards is representing Mr. Spectator’s sign of the
Gaper, awed, it seems, and terrified by Sempronius’s threats. Juba kills
Sempronius, and takes his own army prisoners, and carries them in triumph
away to Cato. Now I would fain know if any part of Mr. Bayes’s tragedy is
so full of absurdity as this?

“Upon hearing the clash of swords, Lucia and Marcia come in. The question
is, why no men come in upon hearing the noise of swords in the governor’s
hall?  Where was the governor himself?  Where were his guards?  Where
were his servants?  Such an attempt as this, so near the governor of a
place of war, was enough to alarm the whole garrison: and yet, for almost
half an hour after Sempronius was killed, we find none of those appear
who were the likeliest in the world to be alarmed; and the noise of
swords is made to draw only two poor women thither, who were most certain
to run away from it. Upon Lucia and Marcia’s coming in, Lucia appears in
all the symptoms of an hysterical gentlewoman:—

      “‘_Luc_. Sure ’twas the clash of swords! my troubled heart
   Is so cast down, and sunk amidst its sorrows,
   It throbs with fear, and aches at every sound!’

And immediately her old whimsy returns upon her:—

   “O Marcia, should thy brothers, for my sake—
   I die away with horror at the thought.’

“She fancies that there can be no cutting of throats but it must be for
her. If this is tragical, I would fain know what is comical. Well, upon
this they spy the body of Sempronius; and Marcia, deluded by the habit,
it seems, takes him for Juba; for, says she,

   “‘The face is muffled up within the garment.’

“Now, how a man could fight, and fall, with his face muffled up in his
garment, is, I think, a little hard to conceive!  Besides, Juba, before
he killed him, knew him to be Sempronius. It was not by his garment that
he knew this; it was by his face, then: his face therefore was not
muffled. Upon seeing this man with his muffled face, Marcia falls
a-raving; and, owning her passion for the supposed defunct, begins to
make his funeral oration. Upon which Juba enters listening, I suppose on
tip-toe; for I cannot imagine how any one can enter listening in any
other posture. I would fain know how it came to pass that, during all
this time, he had sent nobody—no, not so much as a candle-snuffer—to take
away the dead body of Sempronius. Well, but let us regard him listening.
Having left his apprehension behind him, he, at first, applies what
Marcia says to Sempronius; but finding at last, with much ado, that he
himself is the happy man, he quits his eaves-dropping, and discovers
himself just time enough to prevent his being cuckolded by a dead man, of
whom the moment before he had appeared so jealous, and greedily
intercepts the bliss which was fondly designed for one who could not be
the better for it. But here I must ask a question: how comes Juba to
listen here, who had not listened before throughout the play?  Or how
comes he to be the only person of this tragedy who listens, when love and
treason were so often talked in so public a place as a hall?  I am afraid
the author was driven upon all these absurdities only to introduce this
miserable mistake of Marcia, which, after all, is much below the dignity
of tragedy; as anything is which is the effect or result of trick.

“But let us come to the scenery of the fifth act. Cato appears first upon
the scene, sitting in a thoughtful posture; in his hand Plato’s Treatise
on the Immortality of the Soul; a drawn sword on the table by him. Now
let us consider the place in which this sight is presented to us. The
place, forsooth, is a long hall. Let us suppose that any one should place
himself in this posture, in the midst of one of our halls in London; that
he should appear solus, in a sullen posture, a drawn sword on the table
by him; in his hand Plato’s Treatise on the Immortality of the Soul,
translated lately by Bernard Lintot: I desire the reader to consider
whether such a person as this would pass with them who beheld him for a
great patriot, a great philosopher, or a general, or some whimsical
person who fancied himself all these? and whether the people who belonged
to the family would think that such a person had a design upon their
midriffs or his own?

“In short, that Cato should sit long enough in the aforesaid posture, in
the midst of this large hall, to read over Plato’s Treatise on the
Immortality of the Soul, which is a lecture of two long hours; that he
should propose to himself to be private there upon that occasion; that he
should be angry with his son for intruding there; then that he should
leave this hall upon the pretence of sleep, give himself the mortal wound
in his bedchamber, and then be brought back into that hall to expire,
purely to show his good breeding, and save his friends the trouble of
coming up to his bedchamber; all this appears to me to be improbable,
incredible, impossible.”

Such is the censure of Dennis. There is, as Dryden expresses it, perhaps
“too much horse-play in his railleries;” but if his jests are coarse, his
arguments are strong. Yet, as we love better to be pleased than to be
taught, _Cato_ is read, and the critic is neglected. Flushed with
consciousness of these detections of absurdity in the conduct, he
afterwards attacked the sentiments of Cato; but he then amused himself
with petty cavils and minute objections.

Of Addison’s smaller poems no particular mention is necessary; they have
little that can employ or require a critic. The parallel of the princes
and gods in his verses to Kneller is often happy, but is too well known
to be quoted. His translations, so far as I compared them, want the
exactness of a scholar. That he understood his authors, cannot be
doubted; but his versions will not teach others to understand them, being
too licentiously paraphrastical. They are, however, for the most part,
smooth and easy; and, what is the first excellence of a translator, such
as may be read with pleasure by those who do not know the originals. His
poetry is polished and pure; the product of a mind too judicious to
commit faults, but not sufficiently vigorous to attain excellence. He has
sometimes a striking line, or a shining paragraph; but in the whole he is
warm rather than fervid, and shows more dexterity than strength. He was,
however, one of our earliest examples of correctness. The versification
which he had learned from Dryden he debased rather than refined. His
rhymes are often dissonant; in his Georgic he admits broken lines. He
uses both triplets and Alexandrines, but triplets more frequently in his
translation than his other works. The mere structure of verses seems
never to have engaged much of his care. But his lines are very smooth in
_Rosamond_, and too smooth in _Cato_.

Addison is now to be considered as a critic: a name which the present
generation is scarcely willing to allow him. His criticism is condemned
as tentative or experimental rather than scientific; and he is considered
as deciding by taste rather than by principles.

It is not uncommon for those who have grown wise by the labour of others
to add a little of their own, and overlook their masters. Addison is now
despised by some who perhaps would never have seen his defects but by the
lights which he afforded them. That he always wrote as he would think it
necessary to write now, cannot be affirmed; his instructions were such as
the characters of his readers made proper. That general knowledge which
now circulates in common talk was in his time rarely to be found. Men not
professing learning were not ashamed of ignorance; and, in the female
world, any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured.
His purpose was to infuse literary curiosity, by gentle and unsuspected
conveyance, into the gay, the idle, and the wealthy; he therefore
presented knowledge in the most alluring form, not lofty and austere, but
accessible and familiar. When he showed them their defects, he showed
them likewise that they might be easily supplied. His attempt succeeded;
inquiry was awakened, and comprehension expanded. An emulation of
intellectual elegance was excited, and from this time to our own life has
been gradually exalted, and conversation purified and enlarged.

Dryden had, not many years before, scattered criticism over his prefaces
with very little parsimony; but though he sometimes condescended to be
somewhat familiar, his manner was in general too scholastic for those who
had yet their rudiments to learn, and found it not easy to understand
their master. His observations were framed rather for those that were
learning to write than for those that read only to talk.

An instructor like Addison was now wanting, whose remarks, being
superficial, might be easily understood, and being just, might prepare
the mind for more attainments. Had he presented “Paradise Lost” to the
public with all the pomp of system and severity of science, the criticism
would perhaps have been admired, and the poem still have been neglected;
but by the blandishments of gentleness and facility he has made Milton an
universal favourite, with whom readers of every class think it necessary
to be pleased. He descended now and then to lower disquisitions: and by a
serious display of the beauties of “Chevy Chase” exposed himself to the
ridicule of Wagstaff, who bestowed a like pompous character on Tom Thumb;
and to the contempt of Dennis, who, considering the fundamental position
of his criticism, that “Chevy Chase” pleases, and ought to please,
because it is natural, observes; “that there is a way of deviating from
nature, by bombast or tumour, which soars above nature, and enlarges
images beyond their real bulk; by affectation, which forsakes nature in
quest of something unsuitable; and by imbecility, which degrades nature
by faintness and diminution, by obscuring its appearances, and weakening
its effects.”  In “Chevy Chase” there is not much of either bombast or
affectation; but there is chill and lifeless imbecility. The story cannot
possibly be told in a manner that shall make less impression on the mind.

Before the profound observers of the present race repose too securely on
the consciousness of their superiority to Addison, let them consider his
Remarks on Ovid, in which may be found specimens of criticism
sufficiently subtle and refined: let them peruse likewise his Essays on
Wit, and on the Pleasures of Imagination, in which he founds art on the
base of nature, and draws the principles of invention from dispositions
inherent in the mind of man with skill and elegance, such as his
contemners will not easily attain.

As a describer of life and manners, he must be allowed to stand perhaps
the first of the first rank. His humour, which, as Steele observes, is
peculiar to himself, is so happily diffused as to give the grace of
novelty to domestic scenes and daily occurrences. He never “o’ersteps the
modesty of nature,” nor raises merriment or wonder by the violation of
truth. His figures neither divert by distortion nor amaze by aggravation.
He copies life with so much fidelity that he can be hardly said to
invent; yet his exhibitions have an air so much original, that it is
difficult to suppose them not merely the product of imagination.

As a teacher of wisdom, he may be confidently followed. His religion has
nothing in it enthusiastic or superstitious: he appears neither weakly
credulous nor wantonly sceptical; his morality is neither dangerously lax
nor impracticably rigid. All the enchantment of fancy, and all the
cogency of argument, are employed to recommend to the reader his real
interest, the care of pleasing the Author of his being. Truth is shown
sometimes as the phantom of a vision; sometimes appears half-veiled in an
allegory; sometimes attracts regard in the robes of fancy; and sometimes
steps forth in the confidence of reason. She wears a thousand dresses,
and in all is pleasing.

   “Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet.”

His prose is the model of the middle style; on grave subjects not formal,
on light occasions not grovelling; pure without scrupulosity, and exact
without apparent elaboration; always equable, and always easy, without
glowing words or pointed sentences. Addison never deviates from his track
to snatch a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments, and tries no
hazardous innovations. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in
unexpected splendour.

It was apparently his principal endeavour to avoid all harshness and
severity of diction; he is therefore sometimes verbose in his transitions
and connections, and sometimes descends too much to the language of
conversation; yet if his language had been less idiomatical it might have
lost somewhat of its genuine Anglicism. What he attempted, he performed;
he is never feeble and he did not wish to be energetic; he is never rapid
and he never stagnates. His sentences have neither studied amplitude nor
affected brevity; his periods, though not diligently rounded, are voluble
and easy. Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not
coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights
to the volumes of Addison.




SAVAGE.


IT has been observed in all ages that the advantages of nature or of
fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness: and
that those whom the splendour of their rank, or the extent of their
capacity, has placed upon the summit of human life, have not often given
any just occasion to envy in those who look up to them from a lower
station; whether it be that apparent superiority incites great designs,
and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages; or that the
general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of those whose
eminence drew upon them universal attention have been more carefully
recorded, because they were more generally observed, and have in reality
been only more conspicuous than those of others, not more frequent, or
more severe.

That affluence and power, advantages extrinsic and adventitious, and
therefore easily separable from those by whom they are possessed, should
very often flatter the mind with expectations of felicity which they
cannot give, raises no astonishment: but it seems rational to hope that
intellectual greatness should produce better effects; that minds
qualified for great attainments should first endeavour their own benefit,
and that they who are most able to teach others the way to happiness,
should with most certainty follow it themselves. But this expectation,
however plausible, has been very frequently disappointed. The heroes of
literary as well as civil history have been very often no less remarkable
for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved; and volumes
have been written only to enumerate the miseries of the learned, and
relate their unhappy lives and untimely deaths.

To these mournful narratives I am about to add the Life of RICHARD
SAVAGE, a man whose writings entitle him to an eminent rank in the
classes of learning, and whose misfortunes claim a degree of compassion
not always due to the unhappy, as they were often the consequences of the
crimes of others rather than his own.

In the year 1697, Anne, Countess of Macclesfield, having lived some time
upon very uneasy terms with her husband, thought a public confession of
adultery the most obvious and expeditious method of obtaining her
liberty; and therefore declared that the child with which she was then
great, was begotten by the Earl Rivers. This, as may be imagined, made
her husband no less desirous of a separation than herself, and he
prosecuted his design in the most effectual manner: for he applied, not
to the ecclesiastical courts for a divorce, but to the Parliament for an
Act by which his marriage might be dissolved, the nuptial contract
annulled, and the children of his wife illegitimated. This Act, after the
usual deliberation, he obtained, though without the approbation of some,
who considered marriage as an affair only cognisable by ecclesiastical
judges; and on March 3rd was separated from his wife, whose fortune,
which was very great, was repaid her, and who having, as well as her
husband, the liberty of making another choice, she in a short time
married Colonel Brett.

While the Earl of Macclesfield was prosecuting this affair, his wife was,
on the 10th of January, 1607–8,[sic] delivered of a son: and the Earl
Rivers, by appearing to consider him as his own, left none any reason to
doubt of the sincerity of her declaration; for he was his godfather and
gave him his own name, which was by his direction inserted in the
register of St. Andrew’s parish in Holborn, but unfortunately left him to
the care of his mother, whom, as she was now set free from her husband,
he probably imagined likely to treat with great tenderness the child that
had contributed to so pleasing an event. It is not indeed easy to
discover what motives could be found to overbalance that natural
affection of a parent, or what interest could be promoted by neglect or
cruelty. The dread of shame or of poverty, by which some wretches have
been incited to abandon or murder their children, cannot be supposed to
have affected a woman who had proclaimed her crimes and solicited
reproach, and on whom the clemency of the Legislature had undeservedly
bestowed a fortune, which would have been very little diminished by the
expenses which the care of her child could have brought upon her. It was
therefore not likely that she would be wicked without temptation; that
she would look upon her son from his birth with a kind of resentment and
abhorrence; and, instead of supporting, assisting, and defending him,
delight to see him struggling with misery, or that she would take every
opportunity of aggravating his misfortunes, and obstructing his
resources, and with an implacable and restless cruelty continue her
persecution from the first hour of his life to the last. But whatever
were her motives, no sooner was her son born than she discovered a
resolution of disowning him; and in a very short time removed him from
her sight, by committing him to the care of a poor woman, whom she
directed to educate him as her own, and enjoined never to inform him of
his true parents.

Such was the beginning of the life of Richard Savage. Born with a legal
claim to honour and to affluence, he was in two months illegitimated by
the Parliament, and disowned by his mother, doomed to poverty and
obscurity, and launched upon the ocean of life only that he might be
swallowed by its quicksands, or dashed upon its rocks. His mother could
not indeed infect others with the same cruelty. As it was impossible to
avoid the inquiries which the curiosity or tenderness of her relations
made after her child, she was obliged to give some account of the
measures she had taken; and her mother, the Lady Mason, whether in
approbation of her design, or to prevent more criminal contrivances,
engaged to transact with the nurse, to pay her for her care, and to
superintend the education of the child.

In this charitable office she was assisted by his godmother, Mrs. Lloyd,
who, while she lived, always looked upon him with that tenderness which
the barbarity of his mother made peculiarly necessary; but her death,
which happened in his tenth year, was another of the misfortunes of his
childhood, for though she kindly endeavoured to alleviate his loss by a
legacy of three hundred pounds, yet as he had none to prosecute his
claim, to shelter him from oppression, or call in law to the assistance
of justice, her will was eluded by the executors, and no part of the
money was ever paid. He was, however, not yet wholly abandoned. The Lady
Mason still continued her care, and directed him to be placed at a small
grammar school near St. Albans, where he was called by the name of his
nurse, without the least intimation that he had a claim to any other.
Here he was initiated in literature, and passed through several of the
classes, with what rapidity or with what applause cannot now be known. As
he always spoke with respect of his master, it is probable that the mean
rank in which he then appeared did not hinder his genius from being
distinguished, or his industry from being rewarded; and if in so low a
state he obtained distinctions and rewards, it is not likely that they
were gained but by genius and industry.

It is very reasonable to conjecture that his application was equal to his
abilities, because his improvement was more than proportioned to the
opportunities which he enjoyed; nor can it be doubted that if his
earliest productions had been preserved, like those of happier students,
we might in some have found vigorous sallies of that sprightly humour
which distinguishes “The Author to be Let,” and in others strong touches
of that imagination which painted the solemn scenes of “The Wanderer.”

While he was thus cultivating his genius, his father, the Earl Rivers,
was seized with a distemper, which in a short time put an end to his
life. He had frequently inquired after his son, and had always been
amused with fallacious and evasive answers; but being now in his own
opinion on his death-bed, he thought it his duty to provide for him among
his other natural children, and therefore demanded a positive account of
him, with an importunity not to be diverted or denied. His mother, who
could no longer refuse an answer, determined at least to give such as
should cut him off for ever from that happiness which competence affords,
and therefore declared that he was dead; which is perhaps the first
instance of a lie invented by a mother to deprive her son of a provision
which was designed him by another, and which she could not expect
herself, though he should lose it. This was therefore an act of
wickedness which could not be defeated, because it could not be
suspected; the earl did not imagine that there could exist in a human
form a mother that would ruin her son without enriching herself, and
therefore bestowed upon some other person six thousand pounds which he
had in his will bequeathed to Savage.

The same cruelty which incited his mother to intercept this provision
which had been intended him, prompted her in a short time to another
project, a project worthy of such a disposition. She endeavoured to rid
herself from the danger of being at any time made known to him, by
sending him secretly to the American Plantations. By whose kindness this
scheme was counteracted, or by whose interposition she was induced to lay
aside her design, I know not; it is not improbable that the Lady Mason
might persuade or compel her to desist, or perhaps she could not easily
find accomplices wicked enough to concur in so cruel an action; for it
may be conceived that those who had by a long gradation of guilt hardened
their hearts against the sense of common wickedness, would yet be shocked
at the design of a mother to expose her son to slavery and want, to
expose him without interest, and without provocation; and Savage might on
this occasion find protectors and advocates among those who had long
traded in crimes, and whom compassion had never touched before.

Being hindered, by whatever means, from banishing him into another
country, she formed soon after a scheme for burying him in poverty and
obscurity in his own; and that his station of life, if not the place of
his residence, might keep him for ever at a distance from her, she
ordered him to be placed with a shoemaker in Holborn, that, after the
usual time of trial, he might become his apprentice.

It is generally reported that this project was for some time successful,
and that Savage was employed at the awl longer than he was willing to
confess: nor was it perhaps any great advantage to him, that an
unexpected discovery determined him to quit his occupation.

About this time his nurse, who had always treated him as her own son,
died; and it was natural for him to take care of those effects which by
her death were, as he imagined, become his own: he therefore went to her
house, opened her boxes, and examined her papers, among which he found
some letters written to her by the Lady Mason, which informed him of his
birth, and the reasons for which it was concealed. He was no longer
satisfied with the employment which had been allotted him, but thought he
had a right to share the affluence of his mother; and therefore without
scruple applied to her as her son, and made use of every art to awaken
her tenderness and attract her regard. But neither his letters, nor the
interposition of those friends which his merit or his distress procured
him, made any impression on her mind. She still resolved to neglect,
though she could no longer disown him. It was to no purpose that he
frequently solicited her to admit him to see her; she avoided him with
the most vigilant precaution, and ordered him to be excluded from her
house, by whomsoever he might be introduced, and what reason soever he
might give for entering it.

Savage was at the same time so touched with the discovery of his real
mother, that it was his frequent practice to walk in the dark evenings
for several hours before her door, in hopes of seeing her as she might
come by accident to the window, or cross her apartment with a candle in
her hand. But all his assiduity and tenderness were without effect, for
he could neither soften her heart nor open her hand, and was reduced to
the utmost miseries of want, while he was endeavouring to awaken the
affection of a mother. He was therefore obliged to seek some other means
of support; and, having no profession, became by necessity an author.

At this time the attention of the literary world was engrossed by the
Bangorian controversy, which filled the press with pamphlets, and the
coffee-houses with disputants. Of this subject, as most popular, he made
choice for his first attempt, and, without any other knowledge of the
question than he had casually collected from conversation, published a
poem against the bishop. What was the success or merit of this
performance I know not; it was probably lost among the innumerable
pamphlets to which that dispute gave occasion. Mr. Savage was himself in
a little time ashamed of it, and endeavoured to suppress it, by
destroying all the copies that he could collect. He then attempted a more
gainful kind of writing, and in his eighteenth year offered to the stage
a comedy borrowed from a Spanish plot, which was refused by the players,
and was therefore given by him to Mr. Bullock, who, having more interest,
made some slight alterations, and brought it upon the stage, under the
title of _Woman’s a Riddle_, but allowed the unhappy author no part of
the profit.

Not discouraged, however, at his repulse, he wrote two years afterwards
_Love in a Veil_, another comedy, borrowed likewise from the Spanish, but
with little better success than before; for though it was received and
acted, yet it appeared so late in the year, that the author obtained no
other advantage from it than the acquaintance of Sir Richard Steele and
Mr. Wilks, by whom he was pitied, caressed, and relieved.

Sir Richard Steele, having declared in his favour with all the ardour of
benevolence which constituted his character, promoted his interest with
the utmost zeal, related his misfortunes, applauded his merit, took all
the opportunities of recommending him, and asserted that “the inhumanity
of his mother had given him a right to find every good man his father.”
Nor was Mr. Savage admitted to his acquaintance only, but to his
confidence, of which he sometimes related an instance too extraordinary
to be omitted, as it affords a very just idea of his patron’s character.
He was once desired by Sir Richard, with an air of the utmost importance,
to come very early to his house the next morning. Mr. Savage came as he
had promised, found the chariot at the door, and Sir Richard waiting for
him, and ready to go out. What was intended, and whither they were to go,
Savage could not conjecture, and was not willing to inquire; but
immediately seated himself with Sir Richard. The coachman was ordered to
drive, and they hurried with the utmost expedition to Hyde Park Corner,
where they stopped at a petty tavern, and retired to a private room. Sir
Richard then informed him that he intended to publish a pamphlet, and
that he had desired him to come thither that he might write for him. He
soon sat down to the work. Sir Richard dictated, and Savage wrote, till
the dinner that had been ordered was put upon the table. Savage was
surprised at the meanness of the entertainment, and after some hesitation
ventured to ask for wine, which Sir Richard, not without reluctance,
ordered to be brought. They then finished their dinner, and proceeded in
their pamphlet, which they concluded in the afternoon.

Mr. Savage then imagined his task over, and expected that Sir Richard
would call for the reckoning, and return home; but his expectations
deceived him, for Sir Richard told him that he was without money, and
that the pamphlet must be sold before the dinner could be paid for; and
Savage was therefore obliged to go and offer their new production to sale
for two guineas, which with some difficulty he obtained. Sir Richard then
returned home, having retired that day only to avoid his creditors, and
composed the pamphlet only to discharge his reckoning.

Mr. Savage related another fact equally uncommon, which, though it has no
relation to his life, ought to be preserved. Sir Richard Steele having
one day invited to his house a great number of persons of the first
quality, they were surprised at the number of liveries which surrounded
the table; and after dinner, when wine and mirth had set them free from
the observation of a rigid ceremony, one of them inquired of Sir Richard
how such an expensive train of domestics could be consistent with his
fortune. Sir Richard very frankly confessed that they were fellows of
whom he would very willingly be rid. And being then asked why he did not
discharge them, declared that they were bailiffs, who had introduced
themselves with an execution, and whom, since he could not send them
away, he had thought it convenient to embellish with liveries, that they
might do him credit while they stayed. His friends were diverted with the
expedient, and by paying the debt, discharged their attendance, having
obliged Sir Richard to promise that they should never again find him
graced with a retinue of the same kind.

Under such a tutor, Mr. Savage was not likely to learn prudence or
frugality; and perhaps many of the misfortunes which the want of those
virtues brought upon him in the following parts of his life, might be
justly imputed to so unimproving an example. Nor did the kindness of Sir
Richard end in common favours. He proposed to have established him in
some settled scheme of life, and to have contracted a kind of alliance
with him, by marrying him to a natural daughter, on whom he intended to
bestow a thousand pounds. But though he was always lavish of future
bounties, he conducted his affairs in such a manner that he was very
seldom able to keep his promises, or execute his own intentions; and, as
he was never able to raise the sum which he had offered, the marriage was
delayed. In the meantime he was officiously informed that Mr. Savage had
ridiculed him; by which he was so much exasperated that he withdrew the
allowance which he had paid him, and never afterwards admitted him to his
house.

It is not, indeed, unlikely that Savage might by his imprudence expose
himself to the malice of a talebearer; for his patron had many follies,
which, as his discernment easily discovered, his imagination might
sometimes incite him to mention too ludicrously. A little knowledge of
the world is sufficient to discover that such weakness is very common,
and that there are few who do not sometimes, in the wantonness of
thoughtless mirth, or the heat of transient resentment, speak of their
friends and benefactors with levity and contempt, though in their cooler
moments they want neither sense of their kindness nor reverence for their
virtue; the fault, therefore, of Mr. Savage was rather negligence than
ingratitude. But Sir Richard must likewise be acquitted of severity, for
who is there that can patiently bear contempt from one whom he has
relieved and supported, whose establishment he has laboured, and whose
interest he has promoted?

He was now again abandoned to fortune without any other friend than Mr.
Wilks; a man who, whatever were his abilities or skill as an actor,
deserves at least to be remembered for his virtues, which are not often
to be found in the world, and perhaps less often in his profession than
in others. To be humane, generous, and candid is a very high degree of
merit in any case; but those qualifications deserve still greater praise
when they are found in that condition which makes almost every other man,
for whatever reason, contemptuous, insolent, petulant, selfish, and
brutal.

As Mr. Wilks was one of those to whom calamity seldom complained without
relief, he naturally took an unfortunate wit into his protection, and not
only assisted him in any casual distresses, but continued an equal and
steady kindness to the time of his death. By this interposition Mr.
Savage once obtained from his mother fifty pounds, and a promise of one
hundred and fifty more; but it was the fate of this unhappy man that few
promises of any advantage to him were performed. His mother was infected,
among others, with the general madness of the South Sea traffic; and
having been disappointed in her expectations, refused to pay what perhaps
nothing but the prospect of sudden affluence prompted her to promise.

Being thus obliged to depend upon the friendship of Mr. Wilks, he was
consequently an assiduous frequenter of the theatres: and in a short time
the amusements of the stage took such possession of his mind that he
never was absent from a play in several years. This constant attendance
naturally procured him the acquaintance of the players, and, among
others, of Mrs. Oldfield, who was so much pleased with his conversation,
and touched with his misfortunes, that she allowed him a settled pension
of fifty pounds a year, which was during her life regularly paid. That
this act of generosity may receive its due praise, and that the good
actions of Mrs. Oldfield may not be sullied by her general character, it
is proper to mention that Mr. Savage often declared, in the strongest
terms, that he never saw her alone, or in any other place than behind the
scenes.

At her death he endeavoured to show his gratitude in the most decent
manner, by wearing mourning as for a mother; but did not celebrate her in
elegies, because he knew that too great a profusion of praise would only
have revived those faults which his natural equity did not allow him to
think less because they were committed by one who favoured him; but of
which, though his virtue would not endeavour to palliate them, his
gratitude would not suffer him to prolong the memory or diffuse the
censure.

In his “Wanderer” he has indeed taken an opportunity of mentioning her;
but celebrates her not for her virtue, but her beauty, an excellence
which none ever denied her: this is the only encomium with which he has
rewarded her liberality, and perhaps he has even in this been too lavish
of his praise. He seems to have thought that never to mention his
benefactress would have an appearance of ingratitude, though to have
dedicated any particular performance to her memory would have only
betrayed an officious partiality, and that without exalting her character
would have depressed his own. He had sometimes, by the kindness of Mr.
Wilks, the advantage of a benefit, on which occasions he often received
uncommon marks of regard and compassion; and was once told by the Duke of
Dorset that it was just to consider him as an injured nobleman, and that
in his opinion the nobility ought to think themselves obliged, without
solicitation, to take every opportunity of supporting him by their
countenance and patronage. But he had generally the mortification to hear
that the whole interest of his mother was employed to frustrate his
applications, and that she never left any expedient untried by which he
might be cut off from the possibility of supporting life. The same
disposition she endeavoured to diffuse among all those over whom nature
or fortune gave her any influence, and indeed succeeded too well in her
design; but could not always propagate her effrontery with her cruelty;
for some of those whom she incited against him were ashamed of their own
conduct, and boasted of that relief which they never gave him. In this
censure I do not indiscriminately involve all his relations; for he has
mentioned with gratitude the humanity of one lady, whose name I am now
unable to recollect, and to whom, therefore, I cannot pay the praises
which she deserves for having acted well in opposition to influence,
precept, and example.

The punishment which our laws inflict upon those parents who murder their
infants is well known, nor has its justice ever been contested; but, if
they deserve death who destroy a child in its birth, what pain can be
severe enough for her who forbears to destroy him only to inflict sharper
miseries upon him; who prolongs his life only to make him miserable; and
who exposes him, without care and without pity, to the malice of
oppression, the caprices of chance, and the temptations of poverty; who
rejoices to see him overwhelmed with calamities; and, when his own
industry, or the charity of others, has enabled him to rise for a short
time above his miseries, plunges him again into his former distress?

The kindness of his friends not affording him any constant supply, and
the prospect of improving his fortune by enlarging his acquaintance
necessarily leading him to places of expense, he found it necessary to
endeavour once more at dramatic poetry; for which he was now better
qualified by a more extensive knowledge and longer observation. But
having been unsuccessful in comedy, though rather for want of
opportunities than genius, he resolved to try whether he should not be
more fortunate in exhibiting a tragedy. The story which he chose for the
subject was that of Sir Thomas Overbury, a story well adapted to the
stage, though perhaps not far enough removed from the present age to
admit properly the fictions necessary to complete the plan; for the mind,
which naturally loves truth, is always most offended with the violation
of those truths of which we are most certain; and we of course conceive
those facts most certain which approach nearer to our own time. Out of
this story he formed a tragedy, which, if the circumstances in which he
wrote it be considered, will afford at once an uncommon proof of strength
of genius and evenness of mind, of a serenity not to be ruffled and an
imagination not to be suppressed.

During a considerable part of the time in which he was employed upon this
performance, he was without lodging, and often without meat; nor had he
any other conveniences for study than the fields or the streets allowed
him; there he used to walk and form his speeches, and afterwards step
into a shop, beg for a few moments the use of the pen and ink, and write
down what he had composed upon paper which he had picked up by accident.

If the performance of a writer thus distressed is not perfect, its faults
ought surely to be imputed to a cause very different from want of genius,
and must rather excite pity than provoke censure. But when, under these
discouragements, the tragedy was finished, there yet remained the labour
of introducing it on the stage, an undertaking which, to an ingenuous
mind, was in a very high degree vexatious and disgusting; for, having
little interest or reputation, he was obliged to submit himself wholly to
the players, and admit, with whatever reluctance, the emendations of Mr.
Cibber, which he always considered as the disgrace of his performance. He
had, indeed, in Mr. Hill another critic of a very different class, from
whose friendship he received great assistance on many occasions, and whom
he never mentioned but with the utmost tenderness and regard. He had been
for some time distinguished by him with very particular kindness, and on
this occasion it was natural to apply to him as an author of an
established character. He therefore sent this tragedy to him, with a
short copy of verses, in which he desired his correction. Mr. Hill, whose
humanity and politeness are generally known, readily complied with his
request; but as he is remarkable for singularity of sentiment, and bold
experiments in language, Mr. Savage did not think this 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.

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 seems not to have designed him; for neither his
voice, look, nor gesture were such as were 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 he was more successful, 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 it, 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 profits arose to a hundred pounds, which he thought at that
time a very large sum, having been never master of so much before.

In the dedication, for which he received ten guineas, there is nothing
remarkable. The preface contains a very liberal encomium on the blooming
excellence of Mr. Theophilus Cibber, 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 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 public, they only
hardened in her aversion.

Mr. Hill not only promoted the subscription to the Miscellany, 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
patronise merit in distress, without any other solicitation, were
directed to be left at Button’s Coffee-house; and Mr. Savage going
thither a few days afterwards, without expectation of any effect from his
proposal, found, to his surprise, seventy guineas, which had been sent
him in consequence of the compassion excited by Mr. Hill’s pathetic
representation.

To this Miscellany he wrote a preface, in which he gives an 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 Montagu,
whom he flatters without reserve, and, to confess the truth, with very
little art. 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 panegyrics for the perusal only of his patrons, and to imagine that
he had no other task than to pamper them with praises, however 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
topics 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.

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.

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
coffee-house, 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 separate. 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, and divert themselves
with such amusements as should offer themselves till morning. In this
walk they happened unluckily to discover a light in Robinson’s
Coffee-house, near Charing Cross, and therefore went in. Merchant with
some rudeness demanded a room, and was told that there was a good fire in
the next parlour, which the company were about to leave, being then
paying their reckoning. Merchant, not satisfied with this answer, rushed
into the room, and was followed by his companions. He then petulantly
placed himself between the company and the fire, and soon after kicked
down the table. This produced a quarrel, swords were drawn on both sides,
and one Mr. James Sinclair was killed. Savage, having likewise wounded a
maid that held him, forced his way, with Merchant, out of the house; but
being intimidated and confused, without resolution either to fly or stay,
they were taken in a back court by one of the company, and some soldiers,
whom he had called to his assistance. Being secured and guarded that
night, they were in the morning carried before three justices, who
committed them to the Gatehouse, from whence, upon the death of Mr.
Sinclair, which happened the same day, they were removed in the night to
Newgate, where they were, however, treated with some distinction,
exempted from the ignominy of chains, and confined, not among the common
criminals, but in the Press yard.

When the day of trial came, the court was crowded in a very unusual
manner, and the public appeared to interest itself as in a cause of
general concern. The witnesses against Mr. Savage and his friends were,
the woman who kept the house, which was a house of ill-fame, and her
maid, the men who were in the room with Mr. Sinclair, and a woman of the
town, who had been drinking with them, and with whom one of them had been
seen. They swore in general, that Merchant gave the provocation, which
Savage and Gregory drew their swords to justify; that Savage drew first,
and that he stabbed Sinclair when he was not in a posture of defence, or
while Gregory commanded his sword; that after he had given the thrust he
turned pale, and would have retired, but the maid clung round him, and
one of the company endeavoured to detain him, from whom he broke by
cutting the maid on the head, but was afterwards taken in a court. There
was some difference in their depositions; one did not see Savage give the
wound, another saw it given when Sinclair held his point towards the
ground; and the woman of the town asserted that she did not see
Sinclair’s sword at all. This difference, however, was very far from
amounting to inconsistency; but it was sufficient to show, that the hurry
of the dispute was such that it was not easy to discover the truth with
relation to particular circumstances, and that therefore some deductions
were to be made from the credibility of the testimonies.

Sinclair had declared several times before his death that he received his
wound from Savage: nor did Savage at his trial deny the fact, but
endeavoured partly to extenuate it, by urging the suddenness of the whole
action, and the impossibility of any ill design or premeditated malice;
and partly to justify it by the necessity of self-defence, and the hazard
of his own life, if he had lost that opportunity of giving the thrust: he
observed, that neither reason nor law obliged a man to wait for the blow
which was threatened, and which, if he should suffer it, he might never
be able to return; that it was allowable to prevent an assault, and to
preserve life by taking away that of the adversary by whom it was
endangered. With regard to the violence with which he endeavoured to
escape, he declared that it was not his design to fly from justice, or
decline a trial, but to avoid the expenses and severities of a prison;
and that he intended to appear at the bar without compulsion.

This defence, which took up more than an hour, was heard by the multitude
that thronged the court with the most attentive and respectful silence.
Those who thought he ought not to be acquitted owned that applause could
not be refused him; and those who before pitied his misfortunes now
reverenced his abilities. The witnesses which appeared against him were
proved to be persons of characters which did not entitle them to much
credit; a common strumpet, a woman by whom strumpets were entertained, a
man by whom they were supported: and the character of Savage was by
several persons of distinction asserted to be that of a modest,
inoffensive man, not inclined to broils or to insolence, and who had, to
that time, been only known for his misfortunes and his wit. Had his
audience been his judges, he had undoubtedly been acquitted, but Mr.
Page, who was then upon the bench, treated him with his usual insolence
and severity, and when he had summed up the evidence, endeavoured to
exasperate the jury, as Mr. Savage used to relate it, with this eloquent
harangue:—

“Gentlemen of the jury, you are to consider that Mr. Savage is a very
great man, a much greater man than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that
he wears very fine clothes, much finer clothes than you or I, gentlemen
of the jury; that he has abundance of money in his pockets, much more
money than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; but, gentlemen of the jury,
is it not a very hard case, gentlemen of the jury, that Mr. Savage should
therefore kill you or me, gentlemen of the jury?”

Mr. Savage, hearing his defence thus misrepresented, and the men who were
to decide his fate incited against him by invidious comparisons,
resolutely asserted that his cause was not candidly explained, and began
to recapitulate what he had before said with regard to his condition, and
the necessity of endeavouring to escape the expenses of imprisonment; but
the judge having ordered him to be silent, and repeated his orders
without effect, commanded that he should be taken from the bar by force.

The jury then heard the opinion of the judge, that good characters were
of no weight against positive evidence, though they might turn the scale
where it was doubtful; and that though, when two men attack each other,
the death of either is only manslaughter; but where one is the aggressor,
as in the case before them, and, in pursuance of his first attack, kills
the other, the law supposes the action, however sudden, to be malicious.
They then deliberated upon their verdict, and determined that Mr. Savage
and Mr. Gregory were guilty of murder, and Mr. Merchant, who had no
sword, only of manslaughter.

Thus ended this memorable trial, which lasted eight hours. Mr. Savage and
Mr. Gregory were conducted back to prison, where they were more closely
confined, and loaded with irons of fifty pounds’ weight. Four days
afterwards they were sent back to the court to receive sentence, on which
occasion Mr. Savage made, as far as it could be retained in memory, the
following speech:—

“It is now, my lord, too late to offer anything by way of defence or
vindication; nor can we expect from your lordships, in this court, but
the sentence which the law requires you, as judges, to pronounce against
men of our calamitous condition. But we are also persuaded that as mere
men, and out of this seat of rigorous justice, you are susceptive of the
tender passions, and too humane not to commiserate the unhappy situation
of those whom the law sometimes perhaps exacts from you to pronounce
upon. No doubt you distinguish between offences which arise out of
premeditation, and a disposition habituated to vice or immorality, and
transgressions which are the unhappy and unforeseen effects of casual
absence of reason, and sudden impulse of passion. We therefore hope you
will contribute all you can to an extension of that mercy which the
gentlemen of the jury have been pleased to show to Mr. Merchant, who
(allowing facts as sworn against us by the evidence) has led us into this
our calamity. I hope this will not be construed as if we meant to reflect
upon that gentleman, or remove anything from us upon him, or that we
repine the more at our fate because he has no participation of it. No, my
Lord!  For my part, I declare nothing could more soften my grief than to
be without any companion in so great a misfortune.”

Mr. Savage had now no hopes of life but from the mercy of the Crown,
which was very earnestly solicited by his friends, and which, with
whatever difficulty the story may obtain belief, was obstructed only by
his mother.

To prejudice the queen against him, she made use of an incident which was
omitted in the order of time, that it might be mentioned together with
the purpose which it was made to serve. Mr. Savage, when he had
discovered his birth, had an incessant desire to speak to his mother, who
always avoided him in public, and refused him admission into her house.
One evening, walking, as was his custom, in the street that she
inhabited, he saw the door of her house by accident open; he entered it,
and finding no person in the passage to hinder him, went up-stairs to
salute her. She discovered him before he entered the chamber, alarmed the
family with the most distressful outcries, and when she had by her
screams gathered them about her, ordered them to drive out of the house
that villain, who had forced himself in upon her and endeavoured to
murder her. Savage, who had attempted with the most submissive tenderness
to soften her rage, hearing her utter so detestable an accusation,
thought it prudent to retire, and, I believe, never attempted afterwards
to speak to her.

But shocked as he was with her falsehood and her cruelty, he imagined
that she intended no other use of her lie than to set herself free from
his embraces and solicitations, and was very far from suspecting that she
would treasure it in her memory as an instrument of future wickedness, or
that she would endeavour for this fictitious assault to deprive him of
his life. But when the queen was solicited for his pardon, and informed
of the severe treatment which he had suffered from his judge, she
answered that, however unjustifiable might be the manner of his trial, or
whatever extenuation the action for which he was condemned might admit,
she could not think that man a proper object of the king’s mercy who had
been capable of entering his mother’s house in the night with an intent
to murder her.

By whom this atrocious calumny had been transmitted to the queen, whether
she that invented had the front to relate it, whether she found any one
weak enough to credit it, or corrupt enough to concur with her in her
hateful design, I know not, but methods had been taken to persuade the
queen so strongly of the truth of it, that she for a long time refused to
hear any one of those who petitioned for his life.

Thus had Savage perished by the evidence of a bawd, a strumpet, and his
mother, had not justice and compassion procured him an advocate of rank
too great to be rejected unheard, and of virtue too eminent to be heard
without being believed. His merit and his calamities happened to reach
the ear of the Countess of Hertford, who engaged in his support with all
the tenderness that is excited by pity, and all the zeal which is kindled
by generosity, and, demanding an audience of the queen, laid before her
the whole series of his mother’s cruelty, exposed the improbability of an
accusation by which he was charged with an intent to commit a murder that
could produce no advantage, and soon convinced her how little his former
conduct could deserve to be mentioned as a reason for extraordinary
severity.

The interposition of this lady was so successful, that he was soon after
admitted to bail, and, on the 9th of March, 1728, pleaded the king’s
pardon.

It is natural to inquire upon what motives his mother could persecute him
in a manner so outrageous and implacable; for what reason she could
employ all the arts of malice, and all the snares of calumny, to take
away the life of her own son, of a son who never injured her, who was
never supported by her expense, nor obstructed any prospect of pleasure
or advantage. Why she would endeavour to destroy him by a lie—a lie which
could not gain credit, but must vanish of itself at the first moment of
examination, and of which only this can be said to make it probable, that
it may be observed from her conduct that the most execrable crimes are
sometimes committed without apparent temptation.

This mother is still (1744) alive, and may perhaps even yet, though her
malice was so often defeated, enjoy the pleasure of reflecting that the
life which she often endeavoured to destroy was at last shortened by her
maternal offices; that though she could not transport her son to the
plantations, bury him in the shop of a mechanic, or hasten the hand of
the public executioner, she has yet had the satisfaction of embittering
all his hours, and forcing him into exigencies that hurried on his death.
It is by no means necessary to aggravate the enormity of this woman’s
conduct by placing it in opposition to that of the Countess of Hertford.
No one can fail to observe how much more amiable it is to relieve than to
oppress, and to rescue innocence from destruction than to destroy without
an injury.

Mr. Savage, during his imprisonment, his trial, and the time in which he
lay under sentence of death, behaved with great firmness and equality of
mind, and confirmed by his fortitude the esteem of those who before
admired him for his abilities. The peculiar circumstances of his life
were made more generally known by a short account which was then
published, and of which several thousands were in a few weeks dispersed
over the nation; and the compassion of mankind operated so powerfully in
his favour, that he was enabled, by frequent presents, not only to
support himself, but to assist Mr. Gregory in prison; and when he was
pardoned and released, he found the number of his friends not lessened.

The nature of the act for which he had been tried was in itself doubtful;
of the evidences which appeared against him, the character of the man was
not unexceptionable, that of the woman notoriously infamous; she whose
testimony chiefly influenced the jury to condemn him afterwards retracted
her assertions. He always himself denied that he was drunk, as had been
generally reported. Mr. Gregory, who is now (1744) collector of Antigua,
is said to declare him far less criminal than he was imagined, even by
some who favoured him; and Page himself afterwards confessed that he had
treated him with uncommon rigour. When all these particulars are rated
together, perhaps the memory of Savage may not be much sullied by his
trial. Some time after he obtained his liberty, he met in the street the
woman who had sworn with so much malignity against him. She informed him
that she was in distress, and, with a degree of confidence not easily
attainable, desired him to relieve her. He, instead of insulting her
misery, and taking pleasure in the calamities of one who had brought his
life into danger, reproved her gently for her perjury, and, changing the
only guinea that he had, divided it equally between her and himself. This
is an action which in some ages would have made a saint, and perhaps in
others a hero, and which, without any hyperbolical encomiums, must be
allowed to be an instance of uncommon generosity, an act of complicated
virtue, by which he at once relieved the poor, corrected the vicious, and
forgave an enemy; by which he at once remitted the strongest
provocations, and exercised the most ardent charity. Compassion was
indeed the distinguishing quality of Savage: he never appeared inclined
to take advantage of weakness, to attack the defenceless, or to press
upon the falling. Whoever was distressed was certain at least of his good
wishes; and when he could give no assistance to extricate them from
misfortunes, he endeavoured to soothe them by sympathy and tenderness.
But when his heart was not softened by the sight of misery, he was
sometimes obstinate in his resentment, and did not quickly lose the
remembrance of an injury. He always continued to speak with anger of the
insolence and partiality of Page, and a short time before his death
revenged it by a satire.

It is natural to inquire in what terms Mr. Savage spoke of this fatal
action when the danger was over, and he was under no necessity of using
any art to set his conduct in the fairest light. He was not willing to
dwell upon it; and, if he transiently mentioned it, appeared neither to
consider himself as a murderer, nor as a man wholly free from the guilt
of blood. How much and how long he regretted it appeared in a poem which
he published many years afterwards. On occasion of a copy of verses, in
which the failings of good men are recounted, and in which the author had
endeavoured to illustrate his position, that “the best may sometimes
deviate from virtue,” by an instance of murder committed by Savage in the
heat of wine, Savage remarked that it was no very just representation of
a good man, to suppose him liable to drunkenness, and disposed in his
riots to cut throats.

He was now indeed at liberty, but was, as before, without any other
support than accidental favours and uncertain patronage afforded him;
sources by which he was sometimes very liberally supplied, and which at
other times were suddenly stopped; so that he spent his life between want
and plenty, or, what was yet worse, between beggary and extravagance,
for, as whatever he received was the gift of chance, which might as well
favour him at one time as another, he was tempted to squander what he had
because he always hoped to be immediately supplied. Another cause of his
profusion was the absurd kindness of his friends, who at once rewarded
and enjoyed his abilities by treating him at taverns, and habituating him
to pleasures which he could not afford to enjoy, and which he was not
able to deny himself, though he purchased the luxury of a single night by
the anguish of cold and hunger for a week.

The experience of these inconveniences determined him to endeavour after
some settled income, which, having long found submission and entreaties
fruitless, he attempted to extort from his mother by rougher methods. He
had now, as he acknowledged, lost that tenderness for her which the whole
series of her cruelty had not been able wholly to repress, till he found,
by the efforts which she made for his destruction, that she was not
content with refusing to assist him, and being neutral in his struggles
with poverty, but was ready to snatch every opportunity of adding to his
misfortunes; and that she was now to be considered as an enemy implacably
malicious, whom nothing but his blood could satisfy. He therefore
threatened to harass her with lampoons, and to publish a copious
narrative of her conduct, unless she consented to purchase an exemption
from infamy by allowing him a pension.

This expedient proved successful. Whether shame still survived, though
virtue 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 his design of exposing the cruelty of his
mother, received him into his family, treated him as his equal, and
engaged to allow him a pension of two hundred pounds a year. This was the
golden part of Mr. Savage’s life; and for some time he had no reason to
complain of fortune. His appearance was splendid, his expenses large, and
his acquaintance extensive. He was courted by all who endeavoured to be
thought men of genius, and caressed by all who valued themselves upon a
refined 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 public 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 an opportunity at once of gratifying 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
gradations to its lowest; and, had he afterwards applied to dramatic
poetry, he would perhaps not have had many superiors, for, as he never
suffered any scene to pass before his eyes without notice, he had
treasured in his mind all the different combinations of passions, and the
innumerable mixtures of vice and virtue, which distinguished one
character from another; and, as his conception was strong, his
expressions were clear, he easily received impressions from objects, and
very forcibly transmitted them to others. Of his exact observations on
human life he has left a proof, which would do honour to the greatest
names, in a small pamphlet, called “The Author to be Let,” where he
introduces Iscariot Hackney, a prostitute scribbler, giving an account of
his birth, his education, his disposition and morals, habits of life, and
maxims of conduct. In the introduction are related many secret histories
of the petty writers of that time, but sometimes mixed with ungenerous
reflections on their birth, their circumstances, or those of their
relations; nor can it be denied that some passages are such as Iscariot
Hackney might himself have produced. He was accused likewise of living in
an appearance of friendship with some whom he satirised, and of making
use of the confidence which he gained by a seeming kindness, to discover
failings and expose them. It must be confessed that Mr. Savage’s esteem
was no very certain possession, and that he would lampoon at one time
those whom he had praised at another.

It may be alleged that the same man may change his principles, and that
he who was once deservedly commended may be afterwards satirised with
equal justice, or that the poet was dazzled with the appearance of
virtue, and found the man whom he had celebrated, when he had an
opportunity of examining him more narrowly, unworthy of the panegyric
which he had too hastily bestowed; and that, as a false satire ought to
be recanted, for the sake of him whose reputation may be injured, false
praise ought likewise to be obviated, lest the distinction between vice
and virtue should be lost, lest a bad man should be trusted upon the
credit of his encomiast, or lest others should endeavour to obtain like
praises by the same means. But though these excuses may be often
plausible, and sometimes just, they are very seldom satisfactory to
mankind; and the writer who is not constant to his subject, quickly sinks
into contempt, his satire loses its force, and his panegyric its value;
and he is only considered at one time as a flatterer, and a calumniator
at another. To avoid these imputations, it is only necessary to follow
the rules of virtue, and to preserve an unvaried regard to truth. For
though it is undoubtedly possible that a man, however cautious, may be
sometimes deceived by an artful appearance of virtue, or by false
evidences of guilt, such errors will not be frequent; and it will be
allowed that the name of an author would never have been made
contemptible had no man ever said what he did not think, or misled others
but when he was himself deceived.

“The Author to be Let” was first published in a single pamphlet, and
afterwards inserted in a collection of pieces relating to the “Dunciad,”
which were addressed by Mr. Savage to the Earl of Middlesex, in a
dedication which he was prevailed upon to sign, though he did not write
it, and in which there are some positions that the true author would
perhaps not have published under his own name, and on which Mr. Savage
afterwards reflected with no great satisfaction. The enumeration of the
bad effects of the uncontrolled freedom of the press, and the assertion
that the “liberties taken by the writers of journals with their superiors
were exorbitant and unjustifiable,” very ill became men who have
themselves not always shown the exactest regard to the laws of
subordination in their writings, and who have often satirised those that
at least thought themselves their superiors, as they were eminent for
their hereditary rank, and employed in the highest offices of the
kingdom. But this is only an instance of that partiality which almost
every man indulges with regard to himself: the liberty of the press is a
blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity
when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants; as
the power of the Crown is always thought too great by those who suffer by
its influence, and too little by those in whose favour it is exerted; and
a standing army is generally accounted necessary by those who command,
and dangerous and oppressive by those who support it.

Mr. Savage was likewise very far from believing that the letters annexed
to each species of bad poets in the Bathos were, as he was directed to
assert, “set down at random;” for when he was charged by one of his
friends with putting his name to such an improbability, he had no other
answer to make than that “he did not think of it;” and his friend had too
much tenderness to reply, that next to the crime of writing contrary to
what he thought was that of writing without thinking.

After having remarked what is false in this dedication, it is proper that
I observe the impartiality which I recommend, by declaring what Savage
asserted—that the account of the circumstances which attended the
publication of the “Dunciad,” however strange and improbable, was exactly
true.

The publication of this piece at this time raised Mr. Savage a great
number of enemies among those that were attacked by Mr. Pope, with whom
he was considered as a kind of confederate, and whom he was suspected of
supplying with private intelligence and secret incidents; so that the
ignominy of an informer was added to the terror of a satirist. That he
was not altogether free from literary hypocrisy, and that he sometimes
spoke one thing and wrote another, cannot be denied, because he himself
confessed that, when he lived with great familiarity with Dennis, he
wrote an epigram against him.

Mr. Savage, however, set all the malice of all the pigmy writers at
defiance, and thought the friendship of Mr. Pope cheaply purchased by
being exposed to their censure and their hatred; nor had he any reason to
repent of the preference, for he found Mr. Pope a steady and unalienable
friend almost to the end of his life.

About this time, notwithstanding his avowed neutrality with regard to
party, he published a panegyric on Sir Robert Walpole, for which he was
rewarded by him with twenty guineas, a sum not very large, if either the
excellence of the performance or the affluence of the patron be
considered; but greater than he afterwards obtained from a person of yet
higher rank, and more desirous in appearance of being distinguished as a
patron of literature.

As he was very far from approving the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole, and
in conversation mentioned him sometimes with acrimony, and generally with
contempt, as he was one of those who were always zealous in their
assertions of the justice of the late opposition, jealous of the rights
of the people, and alarmed by the long-continued triumph of the Court, it
was natural to ask him what could induce him to employ his poetry in
praise of that man who was, in his opinion, an enemy to liberty, and an
oppressor of his country?  He alleged that he was then dependent upon the
Lord Tyrconnel, who was an implicit follower of the ministry: and that,
being enjoined by him, not without menaces, to write in praise of the
leader, he had not resolution sufficient to sacrifice the pleasure of
affluence to that of integrity.

On this, and on many other occasions, he was ready to lament the misery
of living at the tables of other men, which was his fate from the
beginning to the end of his life; for I know not whether he ever had, for
three months together, a settled habitation, in which he could claim a
right of residence.

To this unhappy state it is just to impute much of the inconsistency of
his conduct, for though a readiness to comply with the inclinations of
others was no part of his natural character, yet he was sometimes obliged
to relax his obstinacy, and submit his own judgment, and even his virtue,
to the government of those by whom he was supported. So that if his
miseries were sometimes the consequences of his faults, he ought not yet
to be wholly excluded from compassion, because his faults were very often
the effects of his misfortunes.

In this gay period of his life, while he was surrounded by affluence and
pleasure, 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 refined,
   Inspirits and adorns the thinking mind.”

And more distinctly in the following passage:—

   “By woe, the soul to daring action swells;
   By woe, in plaintless patience it excels:
   From patience prudent, clear experience springs,
   And traces knowledge through the course of things.
   Thence hope is formed, thence fortitude, success,
   Renown—whate’er men covet and caress.”

This performance was always considered by himself as his masterpiece; and
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.

It has been generally objected to “The Wanderer,” that the disposition of
the parts is irregular; that the design is obscure, and the plan
perplexed; that the images, however beautiful, succeed each other without
order; and that the whole performance is not so much a regular fabric, as
a heap of shining materials thrown together by accident, which strikes
rather with the solemn magnificence of a stupendous ruin than the elegant
grandeur of a finished pile. This criticism is universal, and therefore
it is reasonable to believe it at least in a degree just; but Mr. Savage
was always of a contrary opinion, and thought his drift could only be
missed by negligence or stupidity, and that the whole plan was regular,
and the parts distinct. It was never denied to abound with strong
representations of nature, and just observations upon life; and it may
easily be observed that most of his pictures have an evident tendency to
illustrate his first great position, “that good is the consequence of
evil.”  The sun that burns up the mountains fructifies the vales; the
deluge that rushes down the broken rocks with dreadful impetuosity is
separated into purling brooks; and the rage of the hurricane purifies the
air.

Even in this poem he has not been able to forbear one touch upon the
cruelty of his mother, which, though remarkably delicate and tender, is a
proof how deep an impression it had upon his mind. This must be at least
acknowledged, which ought to be thought equivalent to many other
excellences, that this poem can promote no other purposes than those of
virtue, and that it is written with a very strong sense of the efficacy
of religion. But my province is rather to give the history of Mr.
Savage’s performances than to display their beauties, or to obviate the
criticisms which they have occasioned, and therefore I shall not dwell
upon the particular passages which deserve applause. I shall neither show
the excellence of his descriptions, nor expatiate on the terrific
portrait of suicide, nor point out the artful touches by which he has
distinguished the intellectual features of the rebels, who suffer death
in his last canto. It is, however, proper to observe, that Mr. Savage
always declared the characters wholly fictitious, and without the least
allusion to any real persons or actions.

From a poem so diligently laboured, and so successfully finished, it
might be reasonably expected that he should have gained considerable
advantage; nor can it, without some degree of indignation and concern, be
told, that he sold the copy for ten guineas, of which he afterwards
returned two, that the two last sheets of the work might be reprinted, of
which he had in his absence entrusted the correction to a friend, who was
too indolent to perform it with accuracy.

A superstitious regard to the correction of his sheets was one of Mr.
Savage’s peculiarities: he often altered, revised, recurred to his first
reading or punctuation, and again adopted the alteration; he was dubious
and irresolute without end, as on a question of the last importance, and
at last was seldom satisfied. The intrusion or omission of a comma was
sufficient to discompose him, and he would lament an error of a single
letter as a heavy calamity. In one of his letters relating to an
impression of some verses he remarks that he had, with regard to the
correction of the proof, “a spell upon him;” and indeed the anxiety with
which he dwelt upon the minutest and most trifling niceties, deserved no
other name than that of fascination. That he sold so valuable a
performance for so small a price was not to be imputed either to
necessity, by which the learned and ingenious are often obliged to submit
to very hard conditions, or to avarice, by which the booksellers are
frequently incited to oppress that genius by which they are supported,
but to that intemperate desire of pleasure, and habitual slavery to his
passions, which involved him in many perplexities. He happened at that
time to be engaged in the pursuit of some trifling gratification, and,
being without money for the present occasion, sold his poem to the first
bidder, and perhaps for the first price that was proposed, and would
probably have been content with less if less had been offered him.

This poem was addressed to the Lord Tyrconnel, not only in the first
lines, but in a formal dedication filled with the highest strains of
panegyric, and the warmest professions of gratitude, but by no means
remarkable for delicacy of connection or elegance of style. 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 then immediately
discovered not to have deserved them. Of this quarrel, which every day
made more bitter, Lord Tyrconnel and Mr. Savage assigned very different
reasons, which might perhaps all in reality concur, though they were not
all convenient to be alleged by either party. Lord Tyrconnel affirmed
that it was the constant practice of Mr. Savage to enter a tavern with
any company that proposed it, drink the most expensive wines with great
profusion, and when the reckoning was demanded to be without money. If,
as it often happened, his company were willing to defray his part, the
affair ended without any ill consequences; but if they were refractory,
and expected that the wine should be paid for by him that drank it, his
method of composition was, to take them with him to his own apartment,
assume the government of the house, and order the butler in an imperious
manner to set the best wine in the cellar before his company, who often
drank till they forgot the respect due to the house in which they were
entertained, indulged themselves in the utmost extravagance of merriment,
practised the most licentious frolics, and committed all the outrages of
drunkenness. Nor was this the only charge which Lord Tyrconnel brought
against him. Having given him a collection of valuable books, stamped
with his own arms, he had the mortification to see them in a short time
exposed to sale upon the stalls, it being usual with Mr. Savage, when he
wanted a small sum, to take his books to the pawnbroker.

Whoever was acquainted with Mr. Savage easily credited both these
accusations; for having been obliged, from his first entrance into the
world, to subsist upon expedients, affluence was not able to exalt him
above them; and so much was he delighted with wine and conversation, and
so long had he been accustomed to live by chance, that he would at any
time go to the tavern without scruple, and trust for the reckoning to the
liberality of his company, and frequently of company to whom he was very
little known. This conduct, indeed, very seldom drew upon him those
inconveniences that might be feared by any other person, for his
conversation was so entertaining, and his address 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
a stranger.

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 that 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 with nothing. He acknowledged that Lord
Tyrconnel often exhorted him to regulate his method of life, and not to
spend all his nights in taverns, and that he appeared desirous that he
would pass those hours with him which he so freely bestowed upon others.
This demand Mr. Savage considered as a censure of his conduct which he
could never patiently bear, and which, in the latter and cooler parts of
his life, was so offensive to him, that he declared it as his resolution
“to spurn that friend who should pretend to dictate to him;” and it is
not likely that in his earlier years he received admonitions with more
calmness. He was likewise inclined to resent such expectations, as
tending to infringe his liberty, of which he was very jealous, when it
was necessary to the gratification of his passions; and declared that the
request was still more unreasonable as the company to which he was to
have been confined was insupportably disagreeable. This assertion affords
another instance of that inconsistency of his writings with his
conversation which was so often to be observed. He forgot how lavishly he
had, in his dedication to “The Wanderer,” extolled the delicacy and
penetration, the humanity and generosity, the candour and politeness of
the man whom, when he no longer loved him, he declared to be a wretch
without understanding, without good nature, and without justice; of whose
name he thought himself obliged to leave no trace in any future edition
of his writings, and accordingly blotted it out of that copy of “The
Wanderer” which was in his hands.

During his continuance with the Lord Tyrconnel, he wrote “The Triumph of
Health and Mirth,” on the recovery of Lady Tyrconnel from a languishing
illness. This performance is remarkable, not only for the gaiety of the
ideas and the melody of the numbers, but for the agreeable fiction upon
which it is formed. Mirth, overwhelmed with sorrow for the sickness of
her 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
perpetual spring, with 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. As the reputation
of his abilities, the particular circumstances of his birth and life, the
splendour of his appearance, and the distinction which was for some time
paid him by Lord Tyrconnel, entitled him to familiarity with persons of
higher rank than those to whose conversation he had been before admitted,
he did not fail to gratify that curiosity which induced him to take a
nearer view of those whom their birth, their employments, or their
fortunes necessarily placed at a distance from the greatest part of
mankind, and to examine whether their merit was magnified or diminished
by the medium through which it was contemplated; whether the splendour
with which they dazzled their admirers was inherent in themselves, or
only reflected on them by the objects that surrounded them; and whether
great men were selected for high stations, or high stations made great
men.

For this purpose he took all opportunities of conversing familiarly with
those who were most conspicuous at that time for their power or their
influence; he watched their looser moments, and examined their domestic
behaviour, with that acuteness which nature had given him, and which the
uncommon variety of his life had contributed to increase, and that
inquisitiveness which must always be produced in a vigorous mind by an
absolute freedom from all pressing or domestic engagements. His
discernment was quick, and therefore he soon found in every person, and
in every affair, something that deserved attention; he was supported by
others, without any care for himself, and was therefore at leisure to
pursue his observations. More circumstances to constitute a critic on
human life could not easily concur; nor, indeed, could any man, who
assumed from accidental advantages more praise than he could justly claim
from his real merit, admit any acquaintance more dangerous than that of
Savage; of whom likewise it must be confessed, that abilities really
exalted above the common level, or virtue refined from passion, or proof
against corruption, could not easily find an abler judge or a warmer
advocate.

What was the result of Mr. Savage’s inquiry, though he was not much
accustomed to conceal his discoveries, it may not be entirely safe to
relate, because the persons whose characters he criticised are powerful,
and power and resentment are seldom strangers; nor would it perhaps be
wholly just, because what he asserted in conversation might, though true
in general, be heightened by some momentary ardour of imagination, and as
it can be delivered only from memory, may be imperfectly represented, so
that the picture, at first aggravated, and then unskilfully copied, may
be justly suspected to retain no great resemblance of the original.

It may, however, be observed, that he did not appear to have formed very
elevated ideas of those to whom the administration of affairs, or the
conduct of parties, has been intrusted; who have been considered as the
advocates of the Crown, or the guardians of the people; and who have
obtained the most implicit confidence, and the loudest applauses. Of one
particular person, who has been at one time so popular as to be generally
esteemed, and at another so formidable as to be universally detested, he
observed that his acquisitions had been small, or that his capacity was
narrow, and that the whole range of his mind was from obscenity to
politics, and from politics to obscenity.

But the opportunity of indulging his speculations on great characters was
now at an end. He was banished from the table of Lord Tyrconnel, and
turned again adrift upon the world, without prospect of finding quickly
any other harbour. As prudence was not one of the virtues by which he was
distinguished, he made no provision against a misfortune like this. And
though it is not to be imagined but that the separation must for some
time have been preceded by coldness, peevishness, or neglect, though it
was undoubtedly the consequence of accumulated provocations on both
sides, yet every one that knew Savage will readily believe that to him it
was sudden as a stroke of thunder; that, though he might have transiently
suspected it, he had never suffered any thought so unpleasing to sink
into his mind, but that he had driven it away by amusements or dreams of
future felicity and affluence, and had never taken any measures by which
he might prevent a precipitation from plenty to indigence. This quarrel
and separation, and the difficulties to which Mr. Savage was exposed by
them, were soon known both to his friends and enemies; nor was it long
before he perceived, from the behaviour of both, how much is added to the
lustre of genius by the ornaments of wealth. His condition did not appear
to excite much compassion, for he had not been always careful to use the
advantages he enjoyed with that moderation which ought to have been with
more than usual caution preserved by him, who knew, if he had reflected,
that he was only a dependent on the bounty of another, whom he could
expect to support him no longer than he endeavoured to preserve his
favour by complying with his inclinations, and whom he nevertheless set
at defiance, and was continually irritating by negligence or
encroachments.

Examples need not be sought at any great distance to prove that
superiority of fortune has a natural tendency to kindle pride, and that
pride seldom fails to exert itself in contempt and insult; and if this is
often the effect of hereditary wealth, and of honours enjoyed only by the
merits of others, it is some extenuation of any indecent triumphs to
which this unhappy man may have been betrayed, that his prosperity was
heightened by the force of novelty, and made more intoxicating by a sense
of the misery in which he had so long languished, and perhaps of the
insults which he had formerly borne, and which he might now think himself
entitled to revenge. It is too common for those who have unjustly
suffered pain to inflict it likewise in their turn with the same
injustice, and to imagine that they have a right to treat others as they
have themselves been treated.

That Mr. Savage was too much elevated by any good fortune is generally
known; and some passages of his Introduction to “The Author to be Let”
sufficiently show that he did not wholly refrain from such satire, as he
afterwards thought very unjust when he was exposed to it himself; for,
when he was afterwards ridiculed in the character of a distressed poet,
he very easily discovered that distress was not a proper subject for
merriment or topic of invective. He was then able to discern, that if
misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill
fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is
perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was
produced. And the humanity of that man can deserve no panegyric who is
capable of reproaching a criminal in the hands of the executioner. But
these reflections, though they readily occurred to him in the first and
last parts of his life, were, I am afraid, for a long time forgotten; at
least they were, like many other maxims, treasured up in his mind rather
for show than use, and operated very little upon his conduct, however
elegantly he might sometimes explain, or however forcibly he might
inculcate them. His degradation, therefore, from the condition which he
had enjoyed with such wanton thoughtlessness, was considered by many as
an occasion of triumph. Those who had before paid their court to him
without success soon returned the contempt which they had suffered; and
they who had received favours from him, for of such favours as he could
bestow he was very liberal, did not always remember them. So much more
certain are the effects of resentment than of gratitude. It is not only
to many more pleasing to recollect those faults which place others below
them, than those virtues by which they are themselves comparatively
depressed: but it is likewise more easy to neglect than to recompense.
And though there are few who will practise a laborious virtue, there will
never be wanting multitudes that will indulge in easy vice.

Savage, however, was very little disturbed at the marks of contempt which
his ill fortune brought upon him from those whom he never esteemed, and
with whom he never considered himself as levelled by any calamities: and
though it was not without some uneasiness that he saw some whose
friendship he valued change their behaviour, he yet observed their
coldness without much emotion, considered them as the slaves of fortune,
and the worshippers of prosperity, and was more inclined to despise them
than to lament himself.

It does not appear that after this return of his wants he found mankind
equally favourable to him, as at his first appearance in the world. His
story, though in reality not less melancholy, was less affecting, because
it was no longer new. It therefore procured him no new friends, and those
that had formerly relieved him thought they might now consign him to
others. He was now likewise considered by many rather as criminal than as
unhappy, for the friends of Lord Tyrconnel, and of his mother, were
sufficiently industrious to publish his weaknesses, which were indeed
very numerous, and nothing was forgotten that might make him either
hateful or ridiculous. It cannot but be imagined that such
representations of his faults must make great numbers less sensible of
his distress; many who had only an opportunity to hear one part made no
scruple to propagate the account which they received; many assisted their
circulation from malice or revenge; and perhaps many pretended to credit
them, that they might with a better grace withdraw their regard, or
withhold their assistance.

Savage, however, was not one of those who suffered himself to be injured
without resistance, nor was he less 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 the wit and virulence of Savage, that he came with a
number of attendants, that did no honour to his courage, to beat him at a
coffee-house. But it happened that he had left the place a few minutes,
and his lordship had, without danger, the pleasure of boasting how he
would have treated him. Mr. Savage went next day to repay his visit at
his own house, but was prevailed on by his domestics to retire without
insisting on seeing him.

Lord Tyrconnel was accused by Mr. Savage of some actions which scarcely
any provocation will be thought sufficient to justify, such as seizing
what he had in his lodgings, and other instances of wanton cruelty, by
which he increased the distress of Savage without any advantage to
himself.

These mutual accusations were retorted on both sides, for many years,
with the utmost degree of virulence and rage; and time seemed rather to
augment than diminish their resentment. That the anger of Mr. Savage
should be kept alive is not strange, because he felt every day the
consequences of the quarrel; but it might reasonably have been hoped that
Lord Tyrconnel might have relented, and at length have forgot those
provocations, which, however they might have once inflamed him, had not
in reality much hurt him. The spirit of Mr. Savage, indeed, never
suffered him to solicit a reconciliation; he returned reproach for
reproach, and insult for insult; his superiority of wit supplied the
disadvantages of his fortune, and enabled him to form a party, and
prejudice great numbers in his favour. But though this might be some
gratification of his vanity, it afforded very little relief to his
necessities, and he was frequently reduced to uncommon hardships, of
which, however, he never made any mean or importunate complaints, being
formed rather to bear misery with fortitude than enjoy prosperity with
moderation.

He now thought himself again at liberty to expose the cruelty of his
mother; and therefore, I believe, about this time, published “The
Bastard,” a poem remarkable for the vivacious sallies of thought in the
beginning, where he makes a pompous enumeration of the imaginary
advantages of base birth, and the pathetic sentiments at the end, where
he recounts the real calamities which he suffered by the crime of his
parents. The vigour and spirit of the verses, the peculiar circumstances
of the author, the novelty of the subject, and the notoriety of the story
to which the allusions are made, procured this performance a very
favourable reception; 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 was with “due
reverence” 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.”

This was perhaps the first time that she ever discovered a sense of
shame, and on this occasion the power of wit was very conspicuous; the
wretch who had, without scruple, proclaimed herself an adulteress, and
who had first endeavoured to starve her son, then to transport him, and
afterwards to hang him, was not able to bear the representation of her
own conduct, but fled from reproach, though she felt no pain from guilt,
and left Bath in the utmost haste to shelter herself among the crowds of
London. Thus Savage had the satisfaction of finding that, though he could
not reform his mother, he could punish her, and that he did not always
suffer alone.

The pleasure which he received from this increase of his poetical
reputation was sufficient for some time to overbalance the miseries of
want, which this performance did not much alleviate; for it was sold for
a very trivial sum to a bookseller, who, though the success was so
uncommon that five impressions were sold, of which many were undoubtedly
very numerous, had not generosity sufficient to admit the unhappy writer
to any part of the profit. The sale of this poem was always mentioned by
Mr. Savage with the utmost elevation of heart, and referred to by him as
an incontestable proof of a general acknowledgment of his abilities. It
was, indeed, the only production of which he could justly boast a general
reception. But, though he did not lose the opportunity which success gave
him of setting a high rate on his abilities, but paid due deference to
the suffrages of mankind when they were given in his favour, he did not
suffer his esteem of himself to depend upon others, nor found anything
sacred in the voice of the people when they were inclined to censure him;
he then readily showed the folly of expecting that the public should
judge right, observed how slowly poetical merit had often forced its way
into the world; he contented himself with the applause of men of
judgment, and was somewhat disposed to exclude all those from the
character of men of judgment who did not applaud him. But he was at other
times more favourable to mankind than to think them blind to the beauties
of his works, and imputed the slowness of their sale to other causes;
either they were published at a time when the town was empty, or when the
attention of the public was engrossed by some struggle in the Parliament
or some other object of general concern; or they were, by the neglect of
the publisher, not diligently dispersed, or, by his avarice, not
advertised with sufficient frequency. Address, or industry, or liberality
was always wanting, and the blame was laid rather on any person than the
author.

By arts like these, arts which every man practises in some degree, and to
which too much of the little tranquillity of life is to be ascribed,
Savage was always able to live at peace with himself. Had he, indeed,
only made use of these expedients to alleviate the loss or want of
fortune or reputation, or any other advantages which it is not in a man’s
power to bestow upon himself, they might have been justly mentioned as
instances of a philosophical mind, and very properly proposed to the
imitation of multitudes who, for want of diverting their imaginations
with the same dexterity, languish under afflictions which might be easily
removed.

It were doubtless to be wished that truth and reason were universally
prevalent; that everything were esteemed according to its real value; and
that men would secure themselves from being disappointed, in their
endeavours after happiness, by placing it only in virtue, which is always
to be obtained; but, if adventitious and foreign pleasures must be
pursued, it would be perhaps of some benefit, since that pursuit must
frequently be fruitless, if the practice of Savage could be taught, that
folly might be an antidote to folly, and one fallacy be obviated by
another. But the danger of this pleasing intoxication must not be
concealed; nor, indeed, can any one, after having observed the life of
Savage, need to be cautioned against it. By imputing none of his miseries
to himself, he continued to act upon the same principles, and to follow
the same path; was never made wiser by his sufferings, nor preserved by
one misfortune from falling into another. He proceeded throughout his
life to tread the same steps on the same circle; always applauding his
past conduct, or at least forgetting it, to amuse himself with phantoms
of happiness, which were dancing before him; and willingly turned his
eyes from the light of reason, when it would have discovered the
illusion, and shown him, what he never wished to see, his real state. He
is even accused, after having lulled his imagination with those ideal
opiates, of having tried the same experiment upon his conscience; and,
having accustomed himself to impute all deviations from the right to
foreign causes, it is certain that he was upon every occasion too easily
reconciled to himself, and that he appeared very little to regret those
practices which had impaired his reputation. The reigning error of his
life was that he mistook the love for the practice of virtue, and was
indeed not so much a good man as the friend of goodness.

This, at least, must be allowed him, that he always preserved a strong
sense of the dignity, the beauty, and the necessity of virtue; and that
he never contributed deliberately to spread corruption amongst mankind.
His actions, which were generally precipitate, were often blameable; but
his writings, being the production of study, uniformly tended to the
exaltation of the mind and the propagation of morality and piety. These
writings may improve mankind when his failings shall be forgotten; and
therefore he must be considered, upon the whole, as a benefactor to the
world. Nor can his personal example do any hurt, since whoever hears of
his faults will hear of the miseries which they brought upon him, and
which would deserve less pity had not his condition been such as made his
faults pardonable. He may be considered as a child exposed to all the
temptations of indigence, at an age when resol

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