SAVAGE, RICHARD (d. 1743), English poet, was born about 1697, probably of humble parentage. A romantic account of his origin and early life, for which he at any rate supplied the material, appeared in Curll's Poetical Register in 1719. On this and other information provided by Savage, Samuel Johnson founded his Life of Savage, one of the most elaborate of the Lives. It was printed anonymously in 1744, and has made the poet the object of an interest which would be hardly justified by his writ ings. In 1698 Charles Gerrard, 2nd earl of Macclesfield, obtained a divorce from his wife, Anna, daughter of Sir Richard Mason, who shortly afterwards married Colonel Henry Brett. Lady Macclesfield had two children by Richard Savage, 4th earl Rivers, the second of whom was born at Fox Court, Holborn, on the 16th of January 1697, and christened two days later at St. Andrews, Holborn, as Richard Smith. Six months later the child was placed with Anne Portlock in Covent Garden; nothing more is positively known of him.
In 1718 Richard Savage claimed to be this child. His state ments were suspicious, and Mrs. Brett always maintained that he was an impostor. The matter was thoroughly investigated for the first time by W. Moy Thomas, who published the results of his researches in Notes and Queries (second series, vol. vi., 1858). Savage, impostor or not, blackmailed Mrs. Brett and her family with some success, for after the publication of The Bastard (1728) her nephew, John Brownlow, Viscount Tyrconnel, purchased his silence by taking him into his house and allowing him a pension of £200 a year. Savage wrote two success ful plays : Love in a Veil (1718), adapted from the Spanish, and Sir Thomas Overbury (1724). His Miscellaneous Poems were published by subscription in 1726. In 1727 he was arrested for the murder of James Sinclair in a drunken quarrel, and only escaped the death penalty by the intercession of Frances, countess of Hertford (d.
Savage was at his best as a satirist, and in The Author to be Let he published a quantity of scandal about his fellow-scribblers. Proud as he was, he was servile enough to supply Pope with petty gossip about the authors attacked in the Dunciad. His most considerable poem, The Wanderer (1729), shows the in fluence of Thomson's Seasons, part of which had already appeared. Savage tried without success to obtain patronage from Walpole, and hoped in vain to be made poet-laureate. In 1732 Queen Caroline settled on him a pension of £50 a year. Meanwhile he had quarrelled with Lord Tyrconnel, and at the queen's death was reduced to absolute poverty. Pope had been the most faith ful of his friends, and had made him a small regular allowance. With others he now raised money to send him out of reach of his creditors. Savage went to Swansea, but he resented bitterly the conditions imposed by his patrons, and removed to Bristol, where he was imprisoned for debt. All his friends had ceased to help him except Pope, and in 1743 he, too, wrote to break off the connection. Savage died in prison Aug. I, See Johnson's Life of Savage, and Notes and Queries as already quoted. He is the subject of a novel, Richard Savage (1842), by Charles Whitehead, illustrated by John Leech. Richard Savage, a play in four acts by J. M. Barrie and H. B. Marriott-Watson, was presented at an afternoon performance at the Criterion theatre, London, in 1891. The dramatists took considerable liberties with the facts of Savage's career. See also S. V. Makower, Richard Savage, a Mystery in Biography (19°9).