hed, 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 entrusted 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 error 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
gratification, and, being without money for the present occasion, sold
his poem to the first bidder, and perhaps for the first price that was
proposed, and would probably have been content with less if less had
been offered him.

This poem was addressed to the Lord Tyrconnel, not only in the first
lines, but in a formal dedication filled with the highest strains of
panegyric, and the warmest professions of gratitude, but by no means
remarkable for delicacy of connection or elegance of style. These
praises in a short time he found himself inclined to retract, being
discarded by the man on whom he had bestowed them, and whom he then
immediately discovered not to have deserved them. Of this quarrel, which
every day made more bitter, Lord Tyrconnel and Mr. Savage assigned very
different reasons,