The man who called himself Richard Savage officially appeared in London in November 1715 when he was arrested and charged with possession of a seditious, pro-Jacobite pamphlet. When he was brought before the justice, according to court records he gave his name as "Mr. Savage, natural son to the late Earl Rivers." Whether or not this young man with the inflammatory pamphlet, who had himself written several poems attacking the new monarch--among them "An Ironical panagyrick on his pretended Majesty G--" and "The Pretender" (not published until included in The Poetical Works, 1962)--was in fact Richard Savage is still conjectural. Thanks to Samuel Johnson, we know much of what happened to the man who called himself Savage after 1715, but his life from the time he claims he was christened on 18 January 1697 as Richard Smith until his arrest is a mystery, and the history of his early life is constructed...