IT T has been obferved 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 fummits of human life, have not often given any juft occafion to envy in those who look up to them from a lower station: whether it be that apparent fuperiority incites great defigns, and great defigns are naturally liable to fatal mifcarriages; or that the general lot of mankind is mifery, and the misfortunes of those whofe eminence drew upon them an univerfal attention, have been more carefully recorded, because they were more generally obferved, and have in reality been only more confpicuous than 0 3 thofe thofe of others, not more frequent, or more fevere. That affluence and power, advantages extrinfic and adventitious, and therefore eafily feparable from those by whom they are poffeffed, fhould very often flatter the mind with expectations of felicity which they cannot give, raises no aftonishment; but it seems rational to hope, that intellectual greatness fhould produce better effects that minds qualified for great attainments should firft endeavour their own benefit; and that they who are molt able to teach others the way to happiness, should with most certainty follow it themselves. But this expectation, however plaufible, has been very frequently disappointed. The heroes of literary as well as civil history have been very often no lefs remarkable for what they have atchieved; and yolumes have been written only to enumerate the miseries of the learned, and relate their unhappy lives, and untimely deaths, To thefe mournful narratives, I am about to add the Life of Richard Savage, a man whose whofe writings entitle him to an eminent rank in the claffes of learning, and whofe misfortunes claim a degree of compaffion, not always due to the unhappy, as they were often the confequences of the crimes of others, rather than his own. In the year 1697, Anne Countess of Macclesfield, having lived for fome time upon very uneafy terms with her husband, thought a public confeffion of adultery the most obvious and expeditious method of obtaining her liberty; and therefore declared, that the child, with which fhe was then great, was begotten by the Earl Rivers. This, as may be imagined, made her husband no lefs defirous of a separation than herself, and he profecuted his design in the most effectual manner; for he applied not to the ecclefiaftical courts for a divorce, but to the parliament for an act, by which his marriage might be diffolved, the nuptial contract totally annulled, and the children of his wife illegitimated. This act, after the ufual deliberation, he obtained, though without the approbation of fome, who confidered marriage as an affair only cognizable by ecclefiaf |