age could be taught,
that folly might be an antidote to folly, and one fallacy be obviated
by another. But the danger of this pleasing intoxication must not be
concealed; nor, indeed, can any one, after having observed the life
of Savage, need to be cautioned against it. By imputing none of his
miseries to himself, he continued to act upon the same principles, and
to follow the same path; was never made wiser by his sufferings, nor
preserved by one misfortune from falling into another. He proceeded
throughout his life to tread the same steps on the same circle; always
applauding his past conduct, or at least forgetting it, to amuse himself
with phantoms of happiness, which were dancing before him; and willingly
turned his eyes from the light of reason, when it would have discovered
the illusion, and shown him, what he never wished to see, his real
state. He is even accused, after having lulled his imagination with
those ideal opiates, of having tried the same experiment upon his
conscience; and, having accustomed himself to impute all deviations
from the right to foreign causes, it is certain that he was upon every
occasion too easily reconciled to himself, and that he appeared very
little to regret those practices which had impaired his reputation. The
reigning error of his life was that he mistook the love for the practice
of virtue, and was indeed not so much a good man as the friend of
goodness.

This, at least, must be allowed him, that he always preserved a strong
sense of the dignity, the beauty, and the necessity of virtue; and that
he never contributed deliberately to spread corruption amongst mankind.
His actions, which were generally precipitate, were often blameable;
but his writings, being the production of study, uniformly tended to the
exaltation of the mind and the propagation of morality and piety. These
writings may improve mankind when his failings shall be forgotten; and
therefore he must be considered, upon the whole, as a benefactor to the
world. Nor can his personal example do any hurt, since whoever hears of
his faults will hear of the miseries which they brought upon him, and
which would deserve less pity had not his condition been such as made
his faults pardonable. He may be considered as a child exposed to all
the temptations of indigence, at an age when resolution was not
yet strengthened by conviction, nor virtue confirmed by habit; a
circumstance which, in his "Bastard," he laments in a ve