SOURCE: Viator, Timothy J. “Richard Savage on Colley Cibber: ‘Idle’ Verse and the Duties of a Poet.” English Language Notes 26, no. 2 (December 1988): 24-29.

In the following essay, Viator chides fellow critic Clarence Tracy for not referring, in his biography of Savage, to a letter Savage wrote to Reverend Thomas Birch, reflecting the poet's criteria for good poetry and showing his disdain for England's then-Poet Laureate, Colley Cibber.

Clarence Tracy in The Artificial Bastard: A Biography of Richard Savage refers to a series of eleven letters that Savage wrote to Reverend Thomas Birch between 1734 and 1739. By focusing on Savage and Birch's business relationship, however, Tracy omits the full details of the correspondence, a noteworthy omission since he states that the letters form “the only considerable series of [Savage's] letters that has survived.”¹ In particular, Tracy fails to discuss or reprint fully a revealing letter, dated September 1734, which is the...