ty. The dread of shame or of poverty, by which some wretches have
been incited to abandon or 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 peculiarly necessary; but her death,
which happened in his tenth year, was another of the misfortunes of his
childhood, for though she kindly endeavoured to alleviate his loss by
a legacy of three hundred pounds, yet as he had none to prosecute his
claim, to shelter him from