imself had made him a present, were sold or pawned by
him, so that he had often the mortification to see them exposed to sale
upon stalls.
Savage, it seems, was so accustomed to live by expedients, that
affluence could not raise him above them. He often went to the tavern
and trusted the payment of his reckoning to the liberality of his
company; and frequently of company to whom he was very little known.
This conduct indeed, seldom drew him into much inconvenience, or his
conversation and address were so pleasing, that few thought the pleasure
which they received from him, dearly purchased by paying for his wine.
It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger,
whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he
had not often a friend long, without obliging him to become an enemy.
Mr. Savage on the other hand declared, that lord Tyrconnel quarrelled
with him because he would not subtract from his own luxury and
extravagance what he had promised to allow him; and that his resentment
was only a plea for the violation of his promise: He asserted that he
had done nothing which ought to exclude him from that subsistence which
he thought not so much a favour as a debt, since it was offered him upon
conditions, which he had never broken; and that his only fault was, that
he could not be supported upon nothing.
Savage's passions were strong, among which his resentment was not the
weakest; and as gratitude was not his constant virtue, we ought not too
hastily to give credit to all his prejudice asserts against (his once
praised patron) lord Tyrconnel.
During his continuance with the lord Tyrconnel, he wrote the Triumph of
Health and Mirth, on the recovery of the lady Tyrconnel, from a
languishing illness. This poem is built upon a beautiful fiction. Mirth
overwhelmed with sickness for the death of a favourite, takes a flight
in quest of her sister Health, whom she finds reclined upon the brow of
a lofty mountain, amidst the fragrance of a perpetual spring, and the
breezes of the morning sporting about her. Being solicited by her sister
Mirth, she readily promises her assistance, flies away in a cloud, and
impregnates the waters of Bath with new virtues, by which the sickness
of Belinda is relieved.
While Mr. Savage continued in high life, he did not let slip any
opportunity to examine whether the merit of the great is magnified or
diminished by the medium through which it is cont
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