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AT THE Apollo Peels, BY THE MARTINS.
Anno 1780.

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Blockurti 2-21-27 16447

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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 calt pacity, 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 defignis, and great defigns are naturally liable to fatal mifcarriages, or that the general lot of mankind is mifery, and the misfortunes of thofe 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 thofe of others, not more frequent or morè Leveres per MO*

That affluence and power, advantagesextrinfic and adventitious, and therefore cafily feparable from thofe by whom they are poffeffed, fhould very often flatter the mind with expectations of felicity which they cannot give, raifes no aftonishment; but it seems rational to hope that intellectual greatnefs fhould produce better effects; that minds qualified for great attainments fhould 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 plaufible, has been very frequently difappointed. The heroes of literary as well as civil history have been very often no lefs remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved; and volumes have been written only to enumerate the miferies of the learned, and relate their unhappy lives and untimely deaths.orowai To these mournful narratives I am about to add The Life of Richard Savage, a man 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 Countefs of Macclesfield, having lived for fome time upon very uneafy 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 easily imagined, made her husband no lefs defirous of a feparation than herself, and he prosecuted his defign 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 nup

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