atisfied with the diminution of his salary; but contracted, as in
other places, acquaintance with those who were most distinguished in
that country, among whom he has celebrated Mr. Powell and Mrs. Jones, by
some verses which he inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine[84].

Here he completed his tragedy, of which two acts were wanting when he
left London; and was desirous of coming to town, to bring it upon the
stage. This design was very warmly opposed; and he was advised, by his
chief benefactor, to put it into the hands of Mr. Thomson and Mr.
Mallet, that it might be fitted for the stage, and to allow his friends
to receive the profits, out of which an annual pension should be paid
him.

This proposal he rejected with the utmost contempt. He was by no means
convinced that the judgment of those, to whom he was required to
submit, was superiour to his own. He was now determined, as he expressed
it, to be "no longer kept in leading-strings," and had no elevated idea
of "his bounty, who proposed to pension him out of the profits of his
own labours."

He attempted in Wales to promote a subscription for his works, and had
once hopes of success; but, in a short time afterwards, formed a
resolution of leaving that part of the country, to which he thought it
not reasonable to be confined, for the gratification of those who,
having promised him a liberal income, had no sooner banished him to a
remote corner, than they reduced his allowance to a salary scarcely
equal to the necessities of life.

His resentment of this treatment, which, in his own opinion, at least,
he had not deserved, was such, that he broke off all correspondence with
most of his contributors, and appeared to consider them as persecutors
and oppressors; and, in the latter part of his life, declared that their
conduct toward him since his departure from London "had been
perfidiousness improving on perfidiousness, and inhumanity on
inhumanity."

It is not to be supposed, that the necessities of Mr. Savage did not
sometimes incite him to satirical exaggerations of the behaviour of
those by whom he thought himself reduced to them. But it must be
granted, that the diminution of his allowance was a great hardship, and
that those who withdrew their subscriptions from a man, who, upon the
faith of their promise, had gone into a kind of banishment, and
abandoned all those by whom he had been before relieved in his
distresses, will find it no easy task to vindicate