discoveries, it may not be entirely safe to
relate, because the persons whose characters he criticised are powerful,
and power and resentment are seldom strangers; nor would it perhaps be
wholly just, because what he asserted in conversation might, though true
in general, be heightened by some momentary ardour of imagination, and
as it can be delivered only from memory, may be imperfectly represented,
so that the picture, at first aggravated, and then unskilfully copied,
may be justly suspected to retain no great resemblance of the original.

It may, however, be observed, that he did not appear to have formed very
elevated ideas of those to whom the administration of affairs, or the
conduct of parties, has been intrusted; who have been considered as the
advocates of the Crown, or the guardians of the people; and who have
obtained the most implicit confidence, and the loudest applauses. Of
one particular person, who has been at one time so popular as to be
generally esteemed, and at another so formidable as to be universally
detested, he observed that his acquisitions had been small, or that
his capacity was narrow, and that the whole range of his mind was from
obscenity to politics, and from politics to obscenity.

But the opportunity of indulging his speculations on great characters
was now at an end. He was banished from the table of Lord Tyrconnel, and
turned again adrift upon the world, without prospect of finding quickly
any other harbour. As prudence was not one of the virtues by which he
was distinguished, he made no provision against a misfortune like this.
And though it is not to be imagined but that the separation must for
some time have been preceded by coldness, peevishness, or neglect,
though it was undoubtedly the consequence of accumulated provocations on
both sides, yet every one that knew Savage will readily believe that
to him it was sudden as a stroke of thunder; that, though he might
have transiently suspected it, he had never suffered any thought so
unpleasing to sink into his mind, but that he had driven it away by
amusements or dreams of future felicity and affluence, and had never
taken any measures by which he might prevent a precipitation from plenty
to indigence. This quarrel and separation, and the difficulties to which
Mr. Savage was exposed by them, were soon known both to his friends
and enemies; nor was it long before he perceived, from the behaviour
of both, how much is added to the lus