that, though, whenever he
thought he had any reason to complain of the clergy, he used to threaten
them with a new edition of the Progress of a Divine, it was his calm
and settled resolution to suppress it for ever.

He once intended to have made a better reparation for the folly or
injustice with which he might be charged, by writing another poem,
called the Progress of a Freethinker, whom he intended to lead through
all the stages of vice and folly, to convert him from virtue to
wickedness, and from religion to infidelity, by all the modish sophistry
used for that purpose; and, at last, to dismiss him by his own hand into
the other world.

That he did not execute this design is a real loss to mankind; for he
was too well acquainted with all the scenes of debauchery to have failed
in his representations of them, and too zealous for virtue not to have
represented them in such a manner as should expose them either to
ridicule or detestation.

But this plan was, like others, formed and laid aside, till the vigour
of his imagination was spent, and the effervescence of invention had
subsided; but soon gave way to some other design, which pleased by its
novelty for awhile, and then was neglected like the former.

He was still in his usual exigencies, having no certain support but the
pension allowed him by the queen, which, though it might have kept an
exact economist from want, was very far from being sufficient for Mr.
Savage, who had never been accustomed to dismiss any of his appetites
without the gratification which they solicited, and whom nothing but
want of money withheld from partaking of every pleasure that fell within
his view.

His conduct, with regard to his pension, was very particular. No sooner
had he changed the bill, than he vanished from the sight of all his
acquaintances, and lay, for some time, out of the reach of all the
inquiries that friendship or curiosity could make after him. At length
he appeared again penniless as before, but never informed even those
whom he seemed to regard most, where he had been; nor was his retreat
ever discovered.

This was his constant practice during the whole time that he received
the pension from the queen: he regularly disappeared and returned. He,
indeed, affirmed that he retired to study, and that the money supported
him in solitude for many months; but his friends declared, that the
short time in which it was spent sufficiently confuted his own account
of hi