Richard Savage, one of the most extraordinary characters that is to be met with in all the records of biography, was the son of Anne, countess of Macclesfield, by the earl of Rivers, according to her own confession; and was born in 1698. This confession of adultery was made, to procure a separation from her husband, the earl of Macclesfield : yet, having obtained this end, no sooner was a spurious offspring brought into the world, than she resolved to disown him; and, as long as he lived, she treated him with the most unnatural cruelty. She delivered him over to a poor woman to educate as her own ; maliciously prevented the earl of Rivers from leaving him a legacy of £6000, by declaring him dead; and deprived him of another legacy which his godmother, Mrs. Lloyd, had left him, by concealing from him his birth, and thereby rendering it impossible for him to prosecute his claim. She endeavoured to send him secretly to the plantations; but this plan being frustrated, she placed him apprentice with a shoemaker. In this situation, however, he did not long continue ; for his nurse dying, he went to take care of the effects of his supposed mother, and found in her boxes some letters, which discovered to young Savage his birth, and the cause of its concealment. From the moment of this discovery he became dissatisfied. He conceived that he had a right to share in the affluence of his real mother; and therefore he applied to her, and tried every art to attract her regard. But in vain did he solicit this unnatural parent; she avoided him with the utmost precaution, and took measures to prevent his ever entering her house. Meantime, while he was endeavouring to rouse the affections of a mother, in whom all natural affection was extinct, he was destitute of the means of support. Having a strong inclination to literary pursuits, especially poetry, he wrote poems; and afterwards two plays, Woman's a Riddle, and, Love in a Veil: he was allowed no part of the profits from the first; but by the second he acquired the acquaintance of Sir Richard Steel and Mr. Wilkes, by whom he was pitied, caressed, and relieved. But the kindness of his friends not affording him a constant supply, he wrote the tragedy of Sir Thomas Over-bury ; which not only procured him the esteem of many persons of wit, but brought him £200. The celebrated Aaron Hill, Esq. was of great service to him in correcting and fitting this piece for the stage and the press; and extended his patronage still farther. But Savage was, like many other wits, a bad economist. As fast as his friends raised him out of one difficulty, he sunk into another; and when he found himself greatly involved, he rambled about like a vagabond, with scarcely a shirt on his back. He was in one of these situations all the time he wrote his tragedy above mentioned; without a lodging, and often without a dinner. Mr. Hill also promoted a subscription to a volume of his Miscellanies, and furnished part of the poems of which it was composed. To this Miscellany Savage wrote a preface, in which he gives an account of his mother's cruelty, in a very uncommon strain of humour. The profits of his tragedy and his Miscellanies had now somewhat raised him, both in circumstances and credit, so that the world began to behold him with a more favourable eye, when both his fame and life were endangered by a most unhappy event: a drunken frolic, in which he one night engaged, ended in a fray, and Savage unfortunately killed a man, for which he was condemned to be hanged : his friends earnestly solicited the mercy of the crown, while his mother as earnestly exerted herself to prevent his receiving it. The Coun-tess of Hertford, at length, laid his whole case before Queen Caroline, and Savage obtained a pardon. Savage now lost that affection for his mother which the whole series of her cruelty had not been able wholly to repress ; and considering her as an implacable enemy, whom nothing but his blood could satisfy, threatened to harass her with lampoons, and to publish a copious narrative of her conduct, unless she consented to allow him a pension. This expedient proved successful; and Lord Tyrconnel, upon his promise of laying aside his design of exposing his mother's cruelty, took him into his family, treated him as an equal, and engaged to allow him a pension of £200 a year. This was the happy period of Savage's life. He was courted by all who wished to be thought men of genius and taste. At this time he published the Temple of Health and Mirth, on the recovery of Lady Tyrconnel from a languishing illness; and the Wanderer, a moral poem, which he dedicated to Lord Tyrconnel, in strains of the highest panegyric : but these praises he soon was inclined to retract, 6. R being discarded by the man on whom they were bestowed. Of this quarrel, Lord Tyrconnel and Mr. Savage gave very different accounts. But our author's conduct was ever such as made all his friends, sooner or later, grow weary of him, and even forced most of them to become his enemies.

Being thus once more turned adrift upon the world, Savage, whose passions were very strong, and whose gratitude was very small, exposed the faults of Lord Tyrconnel. He also took revenge upon his mother, by publishing the Bastard, a poem, remarkable for the vivacity of its beginning (where he humorously enumerates the imaginary advantages of base birth ;) and for the pathetic conclusion, wherein he recounts the real calamities which he suffered by the crime of his parents. The following lines, in the opening of the poem, are a specimen of this writer's spirit and versification :

"Blest be the bastard's birth ! thro' wondrous ways He shines eccentric, like a comet's blaze. No sickly fruit of faint compliance he ; He ! stamp'd in nature's mint with ecstasy ! He lives to build, not boast, a generous race; No tenth transmitter of a foolish face. He, kindling from within, requires no flame ; He glories in a bastard's glowing name. Nature's unbounded son, he stands alone, His heart unbias'd, and his mind his own. O mother! yet no mother !-'tis to you My thanks for some distinguish'd claims are due."