tten with a very strong sense of
the efficacy of religion.

But my province is rather to give the history of Mr. Savage's
performances than to display their beauties, or to obviate the
criticisms which they have occasioned; and, therefore, I shall not dwell
upon the particular passages which deserve applause; I shall neither
show the excellence of his descriptions, nor expatiate on the terrifick
portrait of suicide, nor point out the artful touches, by which he has
distinguished the intellectual features of the rebels, who suffer death
in his last canto. It is, however, proper to observe, that Mr. Savage
always declared the characters wholly fictitious, and without the least
allusion to any real persons or actions.

From a poem so diligently laboured, and so successfully finished, it
might be reasonably expected that he should have gained considerable
advantage; nor can it, without some degree of indignation and concern,
be told, that he sold the copy for ten guineas, of which he afterwards
returned two, that the two last sheets of the work might be reprinted,
of which he had, in his absence, intrusted the correction to a friend,
who was too indolent to perform it with accuracy.

A superstitious regard to the correction of his sheets was one of Mr.
Savage's peculiarities: he often altered, revised, recurred to his first
reading or punctuation, and again adopted the alteration; he was dubious
and irresolute without end, as on a question of the last importance, and
at last was seldom satisfied: the intrusion or omission of a comma was
sufficient to discompose him, and he would lament an errour of a single
letter as a heavy calamity. In one of his letters relating to an
impression of some verses, he remarks, that he had, with regard to the
correction of the proof, "a spell upon him;" and indeed the anxiety,
with which he dwelt upon the minutest and most trifling niceties,
deserved no other name than that of fascination.

That he sold so valuable a performance for so small a price, was not to
be imputed either to necessity, by which the learned and ingenious are
often obliged to submit to very hard conditions; or to avarice, by which
the booksellers are frequently incited to oppress that genius by which
they are supported; but to that intemperate desire of pleasure, and
habitual slavery to his passions, which involved him in many
perplexities. He happened, at that time, to be engaged in the pursuit of
some trifling grat