Richard Savage
Overview
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
's Life of Savage (1744), on which is based one of the most elaborate of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets was a work by Samuel Johnson, comprising short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived during the eighteenth century...
.
Savage's parentage, while the subject of some dispute, is central to his legend. Besides the story related by Johnson, a romantic account of Savage's origin and early life, for which he supplied the material, also appeared in the Curll's
Edmund Curll
Edmund Curll was an English bookseller and publisher. His name has become synonymous, through the attacks on him by Alexander Pope, with unscrupulous publication and publicity. Curll rose from poverty to wealth through his publishing, and he did this by approaching book printing in a mercenary...
Poetical Register in 1719.
In 1698 Charles Gerard, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield
Charles Gerard, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield
Charles Gerard, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield was born in France and was naturalized in England by Act of Parliament in 1677.-Biography:...
, obtained a divorce from his wife, Anna, daughter of Sir Richard Mason; shortly afterwards she married Colonel Henry Brett.
Quotations
When anger rushes, unrestrain'd to action,Like a hot steed, it stumbles in its way:The man of thought strikes deepest, and strikes safest.
Sir Thomas Overbury
He lives to build, not boast, a generous race;No tenth transmitter of a foolish face.
The Bastard, line 7, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
May see thee now, though late, redeem thy name,And glorify what else is damn'd to fame.
Character of Foster, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "All crowd, who foremost shall be damn'd to fame", Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, Book III, line 158.