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squander what he had in the hope of being 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, for which he applied to his mother, who instead of relieving, still snatched every opportunity of adding to his misfortunes; it is not to be wondered at therefore that he should consider her as an enemy implacably malicious, whom nothing but his blood could satisfy; and that he should threaten to harass her with lampoons in order to compel her to purchase an exemption from enmity by performing the duties of a mother in allowing him a pension.

The expedient proved successful: for 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 yeart.

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 expences large, and his acquaintance extensive. He was courted by all who en-. deavoured to be thought men of genius, and caressed by

*This is a lesson that cannot be too much read both by patrons and indigent men of genius.-ED.

+ Mr. Savage was then in the 31st year of his age.

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. So powerful is genius when it is invested with the glitter of affluence.

About this time, notwithstanding his avowed neutrality with regard to party, he published a panegyric on Sir Robert Walpole, whom in conversation among his friends he had sometimes treated with great acrimony, and generally with contempt; who asked him what could induce him to employ his poetry in praise of a man who was, in his opinion, an enemy to liberty, and the oppressor of his country? He alleged that he was then dependent on lord Tyrconnel, who was an implicit follower of the ministry; and that being enjoined by him, not without menaces, to write in praise of his 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 other men's tables, which was his fate from the beginning to the end of his life; for says his biographer, "I know not whether he ever had, for three months together a settled habitation in which he could claim a right of residence."

In this gay period * of his life, while he was surrounded by affluence and pleasure, he published the Wanderer, a moral poem, which he always considered as his masterpiece. It was greatly approved by Mr. Pope. The great moral displayed by this poem is to prove that good is the consequence of evil. It is written with a strong sense of the efficacy of religion, consequently it can promote no other purposes than those of virtue. Even in this poem

* 1729.

dedicated to purposes so sublime, he cannot help touching on the cruelty of his mother-a proof how deep the impression was it had made on his mind.

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, which praises he in a short time found himself inclined to retract, being dis carded by the man on whom he bestowed them, and whom he immediately discovered never to have deserved them. Of this quarrel, which every day made more bitter, lord Tyrconnel and Mr. Savage assigned very different reasons. Lord T. affirmed that it was the constant prac tice of Mr. Savage to enter a tavern with any one who proposed it, drink the most expensive wines with great profusion, and when the reckoning was called for 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 who drank it, his method of making 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 indulged themselves in the utmost extravagance of merriment, practised the most licentious frolicks, and committed all the outrages of drunkenness.

His Lordship also gave him a set of books stamped with his own arms, and had afterwards the mortification to see them exposed for sale on a stall, to which they had made their way through the medium of a pawnbroker to whom Savage had pledged them.

Mr. Savage on the other hand, threw the blame on lord Tyrconnel, who he said had involved his estate, and No. 5.

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therefore had poorly sought an occasion to quarrel with him: though at the same time he acknowledged that his Lordship 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 were so freely devoted to others. This demand Mr. Savage considered as a censure on his conduct, which he could never patiently bear, and which in the cooler and latter parts of his life was so offensive to him, that he declared it as his resolution, to spurn that friend who should presume to dictate to him, and it is not likely that in his earlier years he received admonitions with more calmness.

(To be continued.)

To the Editor of the Monthly Correspondent.

SIR,

FROM inadvertence, after setting down the time of the gentleman's birth for October 17th, 1784, I laid down the Ephemeris, being in conversation at the time, and by mistake took up that for 1787, so that though the sign ascending and the Sun's place are the same nearly, yet the place of the Moon and planets are different, therefore I have thought it proper to send their correct places, which the annexed figure will represent; but I have taken the liberty to alter the time two minutes to make it correspond with the ascendant to the conjunction of Mercury at 23 years and 4 months, for a removal or journeying, and then it will exactly agree with the misfortunes and loss of property between 25 and 26

years of age, from the midheaven to the opposition to Saturn, and the ascendant to his quartile, when I have no doubt the native had much family trouble and anxiety; and altogether a discordant and unfortunate time in his 21st and 22d and 23d and 24th years, from the Sun to the mundane quartile of Saturn, and the Georgium Sidus converse, and to the mundane quartile of Jupiter direct.

Upon the whole it must be deemed a moderately good nativity, though it certainly indicates a very eventful, and rather a chequered life till after the middle age, as all the planets, except Herschel, are under the earth; Mars being also in quartile to Saturn and Herschel, and the two latter in opposition; when the significators come to evil configurations with them, the troubles or misfortunes they may produce will not be of a slight or ordinary nature; however I should judge the 30th year will be in general chearful, healthy, and friendly, and the configurations in a single person's nativity are such as may produce marriage probably to advantage, as the ascendant arrives to the mundane trine of Jupiter. It denotes a family, and long life; and a moderate, or rather a good state of health, but the native's fate will be more tranquil and settled after 32 or 33 years of age; but as a full and regular investigation of a nativity would require much time and labour, and could not possibly afford an adequate portion of general interest to the reader of the Monthly Correspondent, where the party is entirely unknown, it cannot be expected to enter into a full detail.

J W.

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