Richard Savage

English poet and satirist. He declared himself the illegitimate son of the 4th Earl Rivers, led a dissipated life, and came to prominence as the subject of a biography by Dr Samuel Johnson (1744). His work includes Miscellaneous Poems (1728), The Convocation (1717), and the moral and descriptive poem in five cantos, ‘The Wanderer’ (1729).

Richard Savage (c.

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 Silruc Poetical Register in 1719.

In 1698 Charles Gerard, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, obtained a divorce from his wife, Anna, daughter of Sir Richard Mason, who shortly afterwards married Colonel Henry Brett. Lady Macclesfield had two children by Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers, the second of whom was born at Fox Court, Holborn, on January 16, 1697, and christened two days later at St Andrews, Holborn, as Richard Smith.

In 1718, Richard Savage claimed to be this child. He stated that he had been cared for by Lady Mason, his grandmother, who had put him in a school near St Albans, and by his godmother, a Mrs. Lloyd. He said he had been pursued by the relentless hostility of his mother, Mrs. Brett, who had prevented Lord Rivers from leaving £6000 to him and had tried to have him abducted to the West Indies. His statements are not corroborated by the depositions of the witnesses in the Macclesfield divorce case, and Mrs. Brett always maintained that he was an impostor. moreover, the godmother of Lady Macclesfield's son was Dorothea Ousley (afterwards Mrs. Delgardno), not Mrs. Lloyd. There is nothing to show that Mrs. Brett was the cruel and vindictive woman he describes her to be, but there is abundant evidence that she provided for her illegitimate children. Discrepancies in Savage's story made James Boswell suspicious, but the matter was thoroughly investigated for the first time by W Moy Thomas, who published the results of his research in Notes and Queries (second series, vol.

Savage, impostor or not, blackmailed Mrs Brett and her family with some success, for after the publication of The Bastard (1728) her nephew, John Brownlow, Viscount Tyrconnel, bought his silence by taking him into his house and allowing him a pension of £200 a year. Savage's first certain work was a poem satirizing Bishop Hoadly, entitled The Convocation, or The Battle of Pamphlets (1717), which he afterwards tried to suppress.

Savage was at his best as a satirist, and in The Author to be Let he reported many scandals involving his fellow scribblers. Savage tried without success to obtain patronage from Ropert Walpole, and he hoped in vain to be made poet-laureate. Savage went to Swansea, but he resented bitterly the conditions imposed by his patrons, and removed to Bristol, where he was imprisoned for debt. Savage died in prison on August 1, 1743.

Savage was the subject of a novel, Richard Savage (1842), by Charles Whitehead, illustrated by John Leech. The dramatists took considerable liberties with the facts of Savage's career. See also SV Makower, Richard Savage, a Mystery in Biography (1909).