This was the golden part of Mr. Savage’s life; for some time he had no reason to complain of fortune; his appearance was splendid, his expences large, and his acquaintance extensive.  ’He was courted, says the author of his life, by all who endeavoured to be thought men of genius, and caressed by all that valued themselves upon a fine taste.  To admire Mr. Savage was a proof of discernment, and to be acquainted with him was a title to poetical reputation.  His presence was sufficient to make any place of entertainment popular; and his approbation and example constituted the fashion.  So powerful is genius, when it is invested with the glitter of affluence.  Men willingly pay to fortune that regard which they owe to merit, and are pleased when they have at once an opportunity of exercising their vanity, and practising their duty.  This interval of prosperity furnished him with opportunities of enlarging his knowledge of human nature, by contemplating life from its highest gradation to its lowest.’

In this gay period of life, when he was surrounded by the affluence of pleasure, 1729, he published the Wanderer, a Moral Poem, of which the design is comprised in these lines.

  I fly all public care, all venal strife,
  To try the Still, compared with Active Life. 
  To prove by these the sons of men may owe,
  The fruits of bliss to bursting clouds of woe,
  That ev’n calamity by thought refin’d
  Inspirits, and adorns the thinking mind.

And more distinctly in the following passage: 

  By woe the soul to daring actions swells,
  By woe in plaintless patience it excells;
  From patience prudent, clear experience springs,
  And traces knowledge through the course of things. 
  Thence hope is form’d, thence fortitude, success,
  Renown—­Whate’er men covet or caress.

This performance was always considered by Mr. Savage as his master-piece; but Mr. Pope, when he asked his opinion of it, told him, that he read it once over, and was not displeased with it, that it gave him more pleasure at the second perusal, and delighted him still more at the third.  From a poem so successfully written, it might be reasonably expected that he should have gained considerable advantages; but the case was otherwise; he sold the copy only for ten guineas.  That he got so small a price for so finished a poem, was not to be imputed either to the necessity of the writer, or to the avarice of the bookseller.  He was a slave to his passions, and being then in the pursuit of some trifling gratification, for which he wanted a supply of money, he sold his poem to the first bidder, and perhaps for the first price which was proposed, and probably would have been content with less, if less had been offered.  It was addressed to the earl of Tyrconnel, not only in the first lines, but in a formal dedication, filled with the highest strains of panegyric.  These praises in a short time he found himself inclined to retract, being discarded by the man on whom he had bestowed them, and whom he said, he then discovered, had not deserved them.