maturer age, when his ear was improved to the approbation of blank verse, of which however his two first lines give a bad specimen. To this poem praise cannot be totally denied. He is allowed by sportsmen to write with great intelligence of his subject, which is the first requisite to excellence; and though it is impossible to interest the common readers of verse in the dangers or pleasures of the chace, he has done all that transition and variety could easily effect; and has with great propriety enlarged his plan by the modes of hunting used in other countries.

With still less judgment did he choose blank verse as the vehicle of Rural Sports.' If blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous, it is crippled prose; and familiar images in laboured language have nothing to recommend them but absurd novelty, which, wanting the attractions of Nature, cannot please long. One excellence of 'The Splendid Shilling' is, that it is short. Disguise can gratify no longer than it deceives.

G. Hawkins; and sold by T. Cooper, at the Globe in Paternoster Row, 1735, 4to. The fourth edition appeared in 1743.

8 Mr. Somervile's poem upon hawking, called Field Sports,' I suppose, is out by this time. It was sent to Mr. Lyttelton, to be read to the Prince, to whom it was inscribed. It seems he is fond of hawking.-SHENSTONE.

Field Sports; a Poem. Humbly addressed to his Royal Highness the Prince. London: Stagg, 1742, folio.

Hobbinol, or the Rural Games; a Burlesque Poem in Blank Verse. London: J. Stagg, 1740, 4to. Dedicated to Hogarth. Third edition, 8vo., 1740.

RICHARD SAVAGE.

( 341 )

SAVAGE.1

1697-8-1743.

--

Cruelty
His

Is placed with a

Sir Richard Steele

Mrs. Oldfield's

The Natural Son of Earl Rivers by the Countess of Macclesfield of his Mother His Father's Death His Godmother's Death Early Misfortunes Lady Mason's kindness Shoemaker Becomes an Author by Profession interests himself in his behalf His Two Comedies kindness His Tragedy of Sir Thomas Overbury' Aaron Hill's kindness - Publishes a Miscellany - Is tried for killing Mr. James Sinclair Obtains a Pardon Received into Lord Tyrconnel's family -Publishes 'The Wanderer,' a Poem His Poem of The Bastard’· Assumes the office of Volunteer Laureat Obtains a Pension from Queen Caroline - Loses his Pension on the Death of the Queen Fruitless endeavours of Pope and others to serve him - His Irregular Life His Retirement to Swansea - Death in a Prison at Bristol Burial in the Churchyard of St. Peter's, Bristol- Works and Character.

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, have 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

1 Savage died on the 31st July, 1743, and in the Gentleman's Magazine' for August, 1743 (p. 416), is the following letter from Johnson, on the subject of his intended 'Life of Savage:'

"MR. URBAN,-As your collections show how often you have owed the ornaments of your poetical pages to the correspondence of the unfortunate and ingenious Mr. Savage, I doubt not but you have so much regard to his memory as to encourage any design that may have a tendency to the preservation of it from insults or calumnies; and therefore, with some degree of assurance, intreat you to inform the public, that his life will speedily be published by a person who was favoured with his confidence, and received from himself an account of most of the transactions which he proposes to mention, to the time of his retirement to Swansea, in Wales.

"From that period to his death in the prison of Bristol, the account will be continued from materials still less liable to objection; his own letters and those

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 an 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.

of his friends, some of which will be inserted in the work, and abstracts of others subjoined in the margin.

66

It may be reasonably imagined that others may have the same design; but as it is not credible that they can obtain the same materials, it must be expected they will supply from invention the want of intelligence, and that under the title of The Life of Savage' they will publish only a novel, filled with romantic adventures and imaginary amours. You may, therefore, perhaps gratify the lovers of truth and wit, by giving me leave to inform them, in your Magazine, that my account will be published in 8vo. by Mr. Roberts, in Warwick Lane."

(No signature.)

On the 14th December, 1743, Johnson signed a receipt for fifteen guineas received from Cave, "for compiling and writing the Life of Richard Savage, Esq., deceased, and in full for all materials thereto applied and not found by the said Edward Cave;" and in February, 1744, was published anonymously, in one vol. 8vo., pp. 180, An Account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage, son of the Earl Rivers. London: printed for J. Roberts, in Warwick Lane, 1744." The insertion of a single paragraph towards the end about Henley and Pope was the only addition which Johnson made to it in after life. "I wrote," he had been heard to say, "forty-eight octavo pages of the Life of Savage at a sitting; but then I sat up all night.”—(Boswell by Croker, ed. 1847, p. 50.)