with which he recounts them, another proof of his humanity and
benevolence.

It is observable that the close of this poem discovers a change which
experience had made in Mr. Savage's opinions. In a poem written by
him in his youth, and published in his Miscellanies, he declares his
contempt of the contracted views and narrow prospects of the middle
state of life, and declares his resolution either to tower like the
cedar, or be trampled like the shrub; but in this poem, though addressed
to a prince, he mentions this state of life as comprising those who
ought most to attract reward, those who merit most the confidence of
power and the familiarity of greatness; and, accidentally mentioning
this passage to one of his friends, declared that in his opinion all the
virtue of mankind was comprehended in that state.

In describing villas and gardens he did not omit to condemn that absurd
custom which prevails among the English of permitting servants to
receive money from strangers for the entertainment that they receive,
and therefore inserted in his poem these lines:

"But what the flowering pride of gardens rare,
However royal, or however fair,
If gates which to excess should still give way,
Ope but, like Peter's paradise, for pay;
If perquisited varlets frequent stand,
And each new walk must a new tax demand;
What foreign eye but with contempt surveys?
What Muse shall from oblivion snatch their praise?"

But before the publication of his performance he recollected that the
queen allowed her garden and cave at Richmond to be shown for money; and
that she so openly countenanced the practice that she had bestowed the
privilege of showing them as a place of profit on a man whose merit she
valued herself upon rewarding, though she gave him only the liberty of
disgracing his country. He therefore thought, with more prudence than
was often exerted by him, that the publication of these lines might be
officiously represented as an insult upon the queen, to whom he owed
his life and his subsistence; and that the propriety of his observation
would be no security against the censures which the unseasonableness of
it might draw upon him; he therefore suppressed the passage in the first
edition, but after the queen's death thought the same caution no longer
necessary, and restored it to the proper place. The poem was, therefore,
published without any political faults, and inscribed to t