e Oldfield. It happened during the summer of
1723, when the poet, who was in his customary state of (theatrical)
destitution, determined to replenish his shabby purse by bringing out
a tragedy. While this play, "The Tragedy of Sir Thomas Overbury,"[A]
was in rehearsal at Drury Lane, Colley Cibber kept the author in
clothes, and the Laureate's son Theophilus, then a very young man,
studied the part of Somerset. The principal actors were not in London
just then, it being the off season, when the younger players strutted
across the classic boards of the house, and Savage determined himself
to enact Sir Thomas. He did so with melancholy results; even Johnson
admits the failure of so presumptuous a leap before the footlights,
"for neither his voice, look, nor gesture were such as were expected
on the stage; and he was so much ashamed of having been reduced to
appear as a player, that he always blotted out his name from the list
when a copy of his tragedy was to be shown to his friends."[B]

[Footnote A: Savage, with his usual bad taste, published this tragedy
as the work of "Richard Savage, _son of the late Earl Rivers_."]

[Footnote B: In the publication of his performance he was more
successful, for the rays of genius that glimmered in it, that
glimmered through all the mists which poverty and Cibber had been able
to spread over it, procured him the notice and esteem of many persons
eminent for their rank, their virtue, and their wit. Of this play,
acted, printed, and dedicated, the accumulated profits arose to an
hundred pounds, which he thought at that time a very large sum, having
been never master of so much before. In the "Dedication," for which
he received ten guineas, there is nothing remarkable. The preface
contains a very liberal enconium on the blooming excellence of Mr.
Theophilus Cibber, which Mr. Savage could not in the latter part of
his life see his friends about to read without snatching the play out
of their hands.--DR. JOHNSON.]

What a sublime hypocrite our Richard was, to be sure. That he felt so
keenly the disgrace (?) of "having been reduced to appear as a player"
was, no doubt, a sentiment intended for the exclusive ear of the great
lexicographer, whose prejudice against the stage and its followers was
strong to the point of absurdity. Despite the qualms of the poet
over exposing his sacred self to the gaze of an audience he had no
sensitiveness in receiving the money of an actress, and he was will