the classic boards of the house, and Savage determined himself to enact Sir Thomas.  He did so with melancholy results; even Johnson admits the failure of so presumptuous a leap before the footlights, “for neither his voice, look, nor gesture were such as were expected on the stage; and he was so much ashamed of having been reduced to appear as a player, that he always blotted out his name from the list when a copy of his tragedy was to be shown to his friends."[B]

[Footnote A:  Savage, with his usual bad taste, published this tragedy as the work of “Richard Savage, son of the late Earl Rivers.”]

[Footnote B:  In the publication of his performance he was more successful, for the rays of genius that glimmered in it, that glimmered through all the mists which poverty and Cibber had been able to spread over it, procured him the notice and esteem of many persons eminent for their rank, their virtue, and their wit.  Of this play, acted, printed, and dedicated, the accumulated profits arose to an hundred pounds, which he thought at that time a very large sum, having been never master of so much before.  In the “Dedication,” for which he received ten guineas, there is nothing remarkable.  The preface contains a very liberal enconium on the blooming excellence of Mr. Theophilus Cibber, which Mr. Savage could not in the latter part of his life see his friends about to read without snatching the play out of their hands.—­DR. JOHNSON.]

What a sublime hypocrite our Richard was, to be sure.  That he felt so keenly the disgrace (?) of “having been reduced to appear as a player” was, no doubt, a sentiment intended for the exclusive ear of the great lexicographer, whose prejudice against the stage and its followers was strong to the point of absurdity.  Despite the qualms of the poet over exposing his sacred self to the gaze of an audience he had no sensitiveness in receiving the money of an actress, and he was willing enough to have her aid in another direction.

That aid was cheerfully given once upon a time when Savage came dangerously near the scaffold.  This prince of scamps and wanderer among the beery precincts of pot-houses happened to stroll one night, accompanied by two choice spirits (and himself full of spirits) into a disreputable coffee-house near Charing Cross.  The three men rudely pushed their way into a parlour where some other roisterers were drinking; the intrusion was naturally resented, and as each and every one of the party chanced to be better filled with wine than with politeness, a brawl was the consequence.  Swords were drawn and Savage killed a Mr. Sinclair, after which drunken act he cut the head of a barmaid who tried to hold him.  Then more swearing, shrieking and sword-thrusting, a cry for soldiers, a flight from the coffee-house, and an almost instant arrest.  A pretty picture, was it not?

When Savage was put on trial for his life, he pleaded that the killing of Sinclair was done in self-defence, and his acquittal would probably have followed but for the shrewdness of the prosecution.  This prosecution was conducted by Francis Page, whose severity Pope immortalised in the lines: