oduction to the Author to be let,
sufficiently show, that he did not wholly refrain from such satire, as
he afterwards thought very unjust when he was exposed to it himself;
for, when he was afterwards ridiculed in the character of a distressed
poet, he very easily discovered that distress was not a proper subject
for merriment, or topick of invective. He was then able to discern, that
if misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill
fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it
is, perhaps, itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was
produced. And the humanity of that man can deserve no panegyrick, who is
capable of reproaching a criminal in the hands of the executioner.

But these reflections, though they readily occurred to him in the first
and last parts of his life, were, I am afraid, for a long time
forgotten; at least they were, like many other maxims, treasured up in
his mind rather for show than use, and operated very little upon his
conduct, however elegantly he might sometimes explain, or however
forcibly he might inculcate them.

His degradation, therefore, from the condition which he had enjoyed with
such wanton thoughtlessness, was considered by many as an occasion of
triumph. Those who had before paid their court to him without success,
soon returned the contempt which they had suffered; and they who had
received favours from him, for of such favours as he could bestow he was
very liberal, did not always remember them. So much more certain are the
effects of resentment than of gratitude: it is not only to many more
pleasing to recollect those faults which place others below them, than
those virtues by which they are themselves comparatively depressed; but
it is, likewise, more easy to neglect, than to recompense; and though
there are few who will practise a laborious virtue, there will never be
wanting multitudes that will indulge an easy vice.

Savage, however, was very little disturbed at the marks of contempt
which his ill fortune brought upon him, from those whom he never
esteemed, and with whom he never considered himself as levelled by any
calamities; and though it was not without some uneasiness that he saw
some, whose friendship he valued, change their behaviour; he yet
observed their coldness without much emotion, considered them as the
slaves of fortune and the worshippers of prosperity, and was more
inclined to despise them, than to