He is even accufed, after having lulled his imagination with those ideal opiates, of hav ing tried the fame experiment upon his confcience; and, having accustomed himself to impute all deviations from the right to foreign causes, it is certain that he was upon every occafion too easily reconciled to himself, and that he appeared very little to regret thofe practices which had impaired his reputation, The reigning error. of his life was, that he miftook the love for the practice of virtue, and was indeed not fo much a good man, as the friend of goodness.

This at least must be allowed him, that he always preferved a strong sense of the dignity, the beauty, and the neceffity 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 productions of ftudy, uniformly tended to the exaltation of the mind, and the propagation of morality and piety.

These writings may improve mankind, when his failings fhall be forgotten; and therefore

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therefore he must be confidered, upon the whole, as a benefactor to the world; nor can his perfonal example do any hurt, fince, whoever hears of his faults, will hear of the miferies which they brought upon him, and which would deferve lefs pity, had not his condition been fuch as made his faults Par donable. He may be confidered as a child exposed to all the temptations of indigence, at an age when refolution was not yet ftrengthened by conviction, nor virtue confirmed by habit; a circumftance which in his Baftard he laments in a very affecting man

ner:

No Mother's care Shielded my infant innocence with prayer: No Father's guardian-hand my youth maintain'd, Call'd forth my virtues, or from vice restrain❜d.

The Baftard, however it might provoke or mortify his mother, could not be expected to melt her to compaffion, fo that he was ftill under the fame want of the neceffities of life; and he therefore exerted all the interest which his wit, or his birth, or his misfortunes, could procure, to obtain, upon the death of Eufden, the place of Poet Laureat,

and

and profecuted his application with so much diligence, that the King publickly declared it his intention to beftow it upon him; but fuch was the fate of Savage, that even the King, when he intended his advantage, was difappointed in his fchemes; for the Lord Chamberlain, who has the difpofal of the laurel, as one of the appendages of his office, either did not know the King's defign, or did not approve it, or thought the nomination of the Lauréat an encroachment upon his rights, and therefore bestowed the laurel upon Colley Cibber.

Mr. Savage, thus difappointed, took a refolution of applying to the queen, that, having once given him life, the would enable him to fupport it, and therefore published a short poem on her birth-day, to which he gave the odd title of Volunteer Laureat. The event of this essay he has himself related in the following letter, which he prefixed to the poem, when he afterwards reprinted it in The Gentleman's Magazine, from whence I have copied it intire*, as this was one of the few attempts in which Mr. Savage fucceeded.

*The poem is inferted in the late collection.

VOL. III.

U

Mr.

"Mr. URBAN,

"In your Magazine for February you "published the laft Volunteer Laureat, writ"ten on a very melancholy occafion, the "death of the royal patronefs of arts and "literature in general, and of the author of "that poem in particular; I now fend you "the first that Mr. Savage wrote under that "title. This gentleman, notwithstanding &

very confiderable intereft, being, on the "death of Mr. Eufden, disappointed of the "Laureat's place, wrote the before-mention"ed poem; which was no fooner published, "but the late Queen fent to a bookfeller for "it: the author had not at that time a friend "either to get him introduced, or his poem "prefented at court; yet fuch was the un¿ fpeakable goodness of that Princefs, that, "notwithstanding this act of ceremony was wanting, in a few days after publication, "Mr. Savage received Bank-bill a

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of

fifty pounds, and a gracious meffage "from her Majefty, by the Lord North and "Guilford, to this effect; "That her Ma

jefty was highly pleafed with the verfes; that he took particularly kind his lines "there

"there relating to the King; that he had "permiffion to write annually on the fame

fubject; and that he should yearly receive "the like prefent, till fomething better ἐσ (which was her Majesty's intention) could "be done for him." After this, he was "permitted to present one of his annual po“ ems to her Majefty, had the honour of kiffing her hand, and met with the most gracious reception. Yours, &c."

Such was the performance, and fuch its reception; a reception which, though by no means unkind, was yet not in the highest degree generous: to chain down the genius of a writer to an annual panegyric, fhewed in the Queen too much defire of hearing her own praises, and a greater regard to herself than to him on whom her bounty was conferred. It was a kind of avaricious generofity, by which flattery was rather purchased, than genius rewarded.

Mrs. Oldfield had formerly given him the fame allowance with much more heroic intention; fhe had no other view than to enable him to profecute his ftudies, and to fet himself

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