w very well the necessity of goodness to the present and future
happiness of mankind; nor is there, perhaps, any writer, who has less
endeavoured to please by flattering the appetites, or perverting the
judgment.

As an author, therefore, and he now ceases to influence mankind in any
other character, if one piece which he had resolved to suppress be
excepted, he has very little to fear from the strictest moral or
religious censure. And though he may not be altogether secure against
the objections of the critick, it must, however, be acknowledged, that
his works are the productions of a genius truly poetical; and, what many
writers who have been more lavishly applauded cannot boast, that they
have an original air, which has no resemblance of any foregoing writer,
that the versification and sentiments have a cast peculiar to
themselves, which no man can imitate with success, because what was
nature in Savage would in another be affectation. It must be confessed
that his descriptions are striking, his images animated, his fictions
justly imagined, and his allegories artfully pursued; that his diction
is elevated, though sometimes forced, and his numbers sonorous and
majestick, though frequently sluggish and encumbered. Of his style, the
general fault is harshness, and its general excellence is dignity: of
his sentiments, the prevailing beauty is simplicity, and uniformity the
prevailing defect.

For his life, or for his writings, none, who candidly consider his
fortune, will think an apology either necessary or difficult. If he was
not always sufficiently instructed in his subject, his knowledge was, at
least, greater than could have been attained by others in the same
state. If his works were sometimes unfinished, accuracy cannot
reasonably be expected from a man oppressed with want, which he has no
hope of relieving but by a speedy publication. The insolence and
resentment of which he is accused were not easily to be avoided by a
great mind, irritated by perpetual hardships, and constrained hourly to
return the spurns of contempt, and repress the insolence of prosperity;
and vanity may surely be readily pardoned in him, to whom life afforded
no other comforts than barren praises, and the consciousness of
deserving them.

Those are no proper judges of his conduct, who have slumbered away their
time on the down of plenty; nor will any wise man presume to say, "Had I
been in Savage's condition, I should have lived or wri