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the 1st of August, 1743. The keeper of the prison, who had treated him with great kindness, buried the unfortunate poet at his own expense.

Savage was the author of two plays, and a volume of miscellaneous poems. Of the latter, the principal piece is The Wanderer' (1729), written with greater care than most of his other productions, as it was the offspring of that happy period of his life when he lived with Lord Tyrconnel. Amidst much puerile and tawdry description, The Wanderer' contains some impressive passages. The versification is easy and correct. 'The Bastard' (1728) is also a superior poem, and bears the impress of true and energetic feeling. One couplet is worthy of Pope. Of the bastard, he says:

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He lives to build, not boast, a generous race:

No tenth transmitter of a foolish face.

The concluding passage, in which he mourns over the fatal act by which he deprived a fellow-mortal of life, and over his own distressing condition, possesses genuine and manly pathos:

Is chance of guilt, that my disastrous heart,
For mischief never meant, must ever smart?
Can self-defence be sin? Ah, plead no more!
What though no purposed malice stained thee o'er,
Had Heaven befriended thy unhappy side,

Thou hadst not been provoked-or thou hadst died.
Far be the guilt of homeshed blood from all
On whom, unsought, embroiling dangers fall!
Still the pale dead revives, and lives to me,
To me through Pity's eye condemned to see.
Remembrance veils his rage, but swells his fate;
Grieved I forgive, and am grown cool too late.
Young and unthoughtful then; who knows, one day,
What ripening virtues might have made their way!
He might have lived till folly died in shame,
Till kindling wisdom felt a thirst for fame.

He might perhaps his country's friend have proved;

Both happy, generous, candid, and beloved;

He might have saved some worth, now doomed to fall,
And I, perchance, in him, have murdered all.

O fate of late repentance! always vain:

Thy remedies but lull undying pain.

Where shall my hope find rest? No mother's care
Shielded my infant innocence with prayer;

No father's guardian hand my youth maintained,
Called forth my virtues, or from vice restrained;
Is it not thine to snatch some powerful arm,
First to advance, then screen from future harm?
Am I returned from death to live in pain?
Or would imperial pity save in vain ?
Distrust it not. What blame can mercy find,
Which gives at once a life, and rears a mind?
Mother, miscalled, farewell-of soul severe,
This sad reflection yet may force one tear;
All I was wretched by to you I owed;
Alone from strangers every comfort flowed!
Lost to the life you gave, your son no more,
And now adopted, who was doomed before,

New born, I may a nobler mother claim,
But dare not whisper her immortal name;
Supremely lovely, and serenely great,
Majestic mother of a kneeling state;
Queen of a people's heart, who ne'er before
Agreed-yet now with one consent adore!
One contest yet remains in this desire,
Who most shall give applause where all admire.

From the Wanderer.

Yon mansion, made by beaming tapers gay,
Drowns the dim night, and counterfeits the day;
From 'lumined windows glancing on the eye.
Around, athwart, the frisking shadows fly,
There midnight riot spreads illusive joys,
And fortune, health, and dearer time destroys.
Soon death's dark agent to luxuriant ease

Shall wake sharp warnings in some fierce disease.

O man! thy fabric's like a well-formed state;

Thy thoughts, first ranked, were sure designed the great
Passions plebeians are, which factions raise;
Wine, like poured oil, excites the raging blaze;
Then giddy anarchy's rude triumphs rise:
Then sovereign Reason from her empire flies:
That ruler once deposed, wisdom and wit,
To noise and folly, place and power, submit;
Like a frail bark thy weakened mind is tossed,
Unsteered, unbalanced, till its wealth is lost.

The miser-spirit eyes the spendthrift heir,
And mourns, too late, effects of sordid care.
His treasures fly to cloy each fawning slave,
Yet grudge a stone to dignify his grave.

For this, low-thoughted craft his life employed;
For this, though wealthy, he no wealth enjoyed;
For this he griped the poor, and alms denied,

Unfriended lived, and unlamented died.

Yet smile, grieved shade! when that unprosperous store Fast lessens, when gay hours return no more;

Smile at thy heir, beholding, in his fall,

Men once obliged, like him, ungrateful all!

Then thought-inspiring woe his heart shall mend,
And prove his only wise, unflattering friend.

Folly exhibits thus unmanly sport,

While plotting Mischief keeps reserved her court.
Lo! from that mount, in blasting sulphur broke,
Stream flames voluminous, enwrapped with smoke!
In chariot-shape they whirl up yonder tower,
Lean on its brow, and like destruction lower!
From the black depth a fiery legion springs;
Each bold bad sceptre claps her sounding wings:
And straight beneath a summoned, traitorous band,
On horror bent, in dark convention stand:
From each fiend's mouth a ruddy vapour flows,
Glides through the roof, and o'er the council glows:
The villains, close beneath the infection pent,
Feel, all possessed, their rising galls ferment;
And burn with faction, hate, and vengeful ire,
For rapine, blood, and devastation dire!
But Justice marks their ways: she waves in air
The sword, high-threatening, like a comet's glare.
While here dark Villainy herself deceives,

There studious Honesty our view relieves.

A feeble taper from yon lonesome room,

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Scattering thin rays, just glimmers through the gloom;
There sits the sapient bard in museful mood,

And glows impassioned for his country's good!
All the bright spirits of the just combined,
Inform, refine, and prompt his towering mind!

A prose pamphlet, 'The Author to be Let,' written under the name of Iscariot Hackney, is ascribed by Johnson to Savage; but it was undoubtedly the work of Pope. It is a satire on the petty writers of that period. It has also been confidently stated, that both the 'Volunteer Laureate' and 'The Bastard' were written by Aaron Hill to serve the cause of his friend or protégé.

SIR SAMUEL GARTH.

SIR SAMUEL GARTH, an eminent physician, was a native of Yorkshire, and educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, of which he was admitted Fellow in 1693. Garth published in 1699 his poem of 'The Dispensary,' to aid the College of Physicians in a war they were then waging with the apothecaries. The latter had ventured to prescribe as well as compound medicines; and the physicians, to outbid them in popularity, advertised that they would give advice gratis to the poor, and establish a dispensary of their own for the sale of cheap medicines. The College triumphed; but in 1703 the House of Lords decided that apothecaries were entitled to exercise the privilege which Garth and his brother-physicians resisted. Garth was a popular and benevolent man, a firm Whig, yet the early encourager of Pope; and when Dryden died, he pronounced a Latin oration over the poet's remains. With Addison, he was, politically and personally, on terms of the closest intimacy. On the accession of George I. he was knighted with Marlborough's sword, and received the double appointment of Physician in ordinary to the King, and Physiciangeneral to the Army. He edited Ovid's Metamorphoses,' Translated by the most eminent hands,' in 1717. In that irreligious age, Garth seems to have partaken of the general scepticism and voluptuousness. Several anecdotes of him were related by Pope to Spence, and he is said to have remarked in his last illness, that he was glad he was dying, for he was weary of having his shoes pulled off and on! Yet, if the date assigned to his birth (1670) be correct, he could then have been only forty-nine years of age. He died January 18, 1718-19, and was buried in the chancel of the church at Harrow-onthe-Hill. The Dispensary' is a mock-heroic poem in six cantos. Some of the leading apothecaries of the day are happily ridiculed; but the interest of the satire has passed away, and it does not contain enough of the life of poetry to preserve it. A few lines will give a specimen of the manner and the versification of the poem. It opens in the following strain;

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Extract from the 'Dispensary.'

Speak, goddess! since 'tis thou that best canst tell
How ancient leagues to modern discord fell;
And why physicians were so cautious grown
Of others' lives, and lavish of their own;
How by a journey to the Elysian plain,
Peace triumphed, and old time returned again.
Not far from that most celebrated place (1)
Where angry Justice shews her awful face;
Where little villains must submit to fate,
That great ones may enjoy the world in state;
There stands a dome, (2) majestic to the sight,
And sumptuous arches bear its oval height;
A golden globe, placed high with artful skill,
Seems, to the distant sight, a gilded pill;
This pile was, by the pious patron's aim,
Raised for a use as noble as its frame;
Nor did the learned society decline
The propagation of that great design;
In all her mazes, Nature's face they viewed,
And, as she disappeared, their search pursued.
Wrapt in the shade of night the goddess lies,
Yet to the learned unveils her dark disguise,
But shuns the gross access of vulgar eyes.

Now she unfolds the faint and dawning strife
Of infant atoms kindling into life;
How ductile matter new meanders takes,
And slender trains of twisting fibres makes;
And how the viscous seeks a closer tone,
By just degrees to harden into bone;

While the more loose flow from the vital urn,
And in full tides of purple streams return;
How lambent flames from life's bright lamps arise,
And dart in emanations through the eyes;
How from each sluice a gentle torrent pours,
To slake a feverish heat with ambient showers;
Whence their mechanic powers the spirits claim;
How great their force, how delicate their frame;
How the same nerves are fashioned to sustain
The greatest pleasure and the greatest pain;
Why bilious juice a golden light puts on,
And floods of chyle in silver currents run;
How the dim speck of entity began

To extend its recent form, and stretch to man;
Why Envy oft transforms with wan disguise,
And why gay Mirth sits smiling in the eyes;
Whence Milo's vigour at the Olympic's shewn,
Whence tropes to Finch, or impudence to Sloane;
How matter, by the varied shape of pores
Or idiots frames, or solemn senators.

Hence 'tis we wait the wondrous cause to find,

How body acts upon impassive mind;

How fumes of wine the thinking part can fire,
Past hopes revive, and present joys inspire;
Why our complexions oft our soul declare,
And how the passions in the features are;
How touch and harmony arise between
Corporeal figure and a form unseen:
How quick their faculties the limbs fulfil,

1 Old Bailey.

2 The College of Physicians,

And act at every summons of the will:
With mighty truths, mysterious to descry,
Which in the womb of distant causes lie.

But now no grand inquiries are descried;
Mean faction reigns where knowledge should preside;
Feuds are increased, and learning laid aside;
Thus synods oft concern for faith conceal,
And for important nothings shew a zeal:
The drooping sciences neglected pine,

And Pæan's beams with fading lustre shine.

No readers here with hectic looks are found,

Nor eyes in rheum, through midnight watching drowned:
The lonely edifice in sweats complains

That nothing there but sullen silence reigns.

This place, so fit for undisturbed repose,
The god of Sloth for his asylum chose;
Upon a couch of down in these abodes,
Supine with folded arms, he thoughtless nods;
Indulging dreams his godhead lull to ease,

With murmurs of soft rills, and whispering trees:
The poppy and each numbing plant dispense
Their drowsy virtue and dull indolence;
No passions interrupt his easy reign,
No problems puzzle his lethargic brain:
But dark oblivion guards his peaceful bed,
And lazy fogs hang lingering o'er his head,
On Death.

'Tis to the vulgar death too harsh appears;
The ill we feel is only in our fears.

To die, is landing on some silent shore,

Where billows never break, nor tempests roar:
Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er.

The wise through thought the insults of death defy;

The fools through blessed insensibility.

"Tis what the guilty fear, the pious crave;

Sought by the wretch, and vanquished by the brave.

It eases lovers, sets the captive free:

And, though a tyrant, offers liberty.

Garth wrote the epilogue to Addison's tragedy of 'Cato,' which ends with the following pleasing lines:

Oh, may once more the happy age appear,

When words were artless, and the thoughts sincere ;
When gold and grandeur were unenvied things,
And courts less coveted than groves and springs!
Love then shall only mourn when Truth complains,
And Constancy feel transport in his own chains;
Sighs with success their own soft language tell,
And eyes shall utter what the lips conceal:
Virtue again to its bright station climb,
And Beauty fear no enemy but time;
The fair shall listen to desert alone,

And every Lucia find a Cato's son.

SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE.

SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE was one of the most fortunate physicians and most persecuted poets of the age. He was born of a good family in Wiltshire, and took the degree of M. A. at Oxford in 1676 He

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