But the golden aera of Savage’s life was now at an end, he was banished the table of lord Tyrconnel, and turned again a-drift upon the world.  While he was in prosperity, he did not behave with a moderation likely to procure friends amongst his inferiors.  He took an opportunity in the sun-shine of his fortune, to revenge himself of those creatures, who, as they are the worshippers of power, made court to him, whom they had before contemptuously treated.  This assuming behaviour of Savage was not altogether unnatural.  He had been avoided and despised by those despicable sycophants, who were proud of his acquaintance when railed to eminence.  In this case, who would not spurn such mean Beings?  His degradation therefore from the condition which he had enjoyed with so much superiority, was considered by many as an occasion of triumph.  Those who had courted him without success, had an opportunity to return the contempt they had suffered.

Mean time, Savage was very diligent in exposing the faults of lord Tyrconnel, over whom he obtained at least this advantage, that he drove him first to the practice of outrage and violence; for he was so much provoked by his wit and virulence, that he came with a number of attendants, to beat him at a coffee-house; but it happened that he had left the place a few minutes before:  Mr. Savage went next day to repay his visit at his own house, but was prevailed upon by his domestics to retire without insisting upon seeing him.

He now thought himself again at full liberty to expose the cruelty of his mother, and therefore about this time published THE BASTARD, a Poem remarkable for the vivacity in the beginning, where he makes a pompous enumeration of the imaginary advantages of base birth, and the pathetic sentiments at the close; where he recounts the real calamities which he suffered by the crime of his parents.

The verses which have an immediate relation to those two circumstances, we shall here insert.

    In gayer hours, when high my fancy ran,
    The Muse exulting thus her lay began.

    Bless’d be the Bastard’s birth! thro’ wond’rous ways,
  He shines excentric like a comet’s blaze. 
  No sickly fruit of faint compliance he;
  He! stamp’d in nature’s mint with extasy! 
  He lives to build, not boast a gen’rous race,
  No tenth transmitter of a foolish face. 
  His daring hope, no fire’s example bounds;
  His first-born nights no prejudice confounds. 
  He, kindling from within requires no flame,
  He glories in a bastard’s glowing name. 
  —­Nature’s unbounded son he stands alone,
  His heart unbiass’d, and his mind his own. 
  —­O mother! yet no mother!—­’Tis to you
  My thanks for such distinguish’d claims are due. 
  —­What had I lost if conjugally kind,
  By nature hating, yet by vows confin’d,
  You had faint drawn me with a form alone,
  A lawful lump of life, by force your own! 
  —­I had been born your dull domestic heir,
  Load of your life and motive of your care;
  Perhaps been poorly rich and meanly great;
  The slave of pomp, a cypher in the state: 
  Lordly neglectful of a worth unknown,
  And slumb’ring in a feat by chance my own,