een reduced to appear as a
player, that he always blotted out his name from the list when a copy of
his tragedy was to be shown to his friends.

In the publication of his performance he was more successful, for the
rays of genius that glimmered in it, that glimmered through all the
mists which poverty and Cibber had been able to spread over it, procured
him the notice and esteem of many persons eminent for their rank, their
virtue, and their wit. Of this play, acted, printed, and dedicated, the
accumulated profits arose to a hundred pounds, which he thought at that
time a very large sum, having been never master of so much before.

In the dedication, for which he received ten guineas, there is nothing
remarkable. The preface contains a very liberal encomium on the blooming
excellence of Mr. Theophilus Cibber, which Mr. Savage could not in the
latter part of his life see his friends about to read without snatching
the play out of their hands. The generosity of Mr. Hill did not end on
this occasion; for afterwards, when Mr. Savage's necessities returned,
he encouraged a subscription to a Miscellany of Poems in a very
extraordinary manner, by publishing his story in the Plain Dealer,
with some affecting lines, which he asserts to have been written by Mr.
Savage upon the treatment received by him from his mother, but of which
he was himself the author, as Mr. Savage afterwards declared. These
lines, and the paper in which they were inserted, had a very powerful
effect upon all but his mother, whom, by making her cruelty more public,
they only hardened in her aversion.

Mr. Hill not only promoted the subscription to the Miscellany, but
furnished likewise the greatest part of the poems of which it is
composed, and particularly "The Happy Man," which he published as a
specimen.

The subscriptions of those whom these papers should influence to
patronise merit in distress, without any other solicitation, were
directed to be left at Button's Coffee-house; and Mr. Savage going
thither a few days afterwards, without expectation of any effect from
his proposal, found, to his surprise, seventy guineas, which had been
sent him in consequence of the compassion excited by Mr. Hill's pathetic
representation.

To this Miscellany he wrote a preface, in which he gives an account of
his mother's cruelty in a very uncommon strain of humour, and with a
gaiety of imagination which the success of his subscription probably
produced. The ded