th great tenderness
the child that had contributed to so pleasing an event. It is not,
indeed, easy to discover what motives could be found to overbalance that
natural affection of a parent, or what interest could be promoted by
neglect or cruelty. The dread of shame or of poverty, by which some
wretches have been incited to abandon or to murder their children,
cannot be supposed to have affected a woman who had proclaimed her
crimes and solicited reproach, and on whom the clemency of the
legislature had undeservedly bestowed a fortune, which would have been
very little diminished by the expenses which the care of her child
could have brought upon her. It was, therefore, not likely that she
would be wicked without temptation; that she would look upon her son,
from his birth, with a kind of resentment and abhorrence; and, instead
of supporting, assisting, and defending him, delight to see him
struggling with misery, or that she would take every opportunity of
aggravating his misfortunes, and obstructing his resources, and, with an
implacable and restless cruelty, continue her persecution from the first
hour of his life to the last.

But, whatever were her motives, no sooner was her son born, than she
discovered a resolution of disowning him; and, in a very short time,
removed him from her sight, by committing him to the care of a poor
woman, whom she directed to educate him as her own, and enjoined never
to inform him of his true parents.

Such was the beginning of the life of Richard Savage. Born with a legal
claim to honour and to affluence, he was, in two months, illegitimated
by the parliament, and disowned by his mother, doomed to poverty and
obscurity, and launched upon the ocean of life, only that he might be
swallowed by its quicksands, or dashed upon its rocks.

His mother could not, indeed, infect others with the same cruelty. As it
was impossible to avoid the inquiries which the curiosity or tenderness
of her relations made after her child, she was obliged to give some
account of the measures she had taken; and her mother, the lady Mason,
whether in approbation of her design, or to prevent more criminal
contrivances, engaged to transact with the nurse, to pay her for her
care, and to superintend the education of the child.

In this charitable office she was assisted by his godmother, Mrs. Lloyd,
who, while she lived, always looked upon him with that tenderness which
the barbarity of his mother made peculia