savage richard editor (1 Ergebnisse)

8vo, pp. xxxii, 312; contemporary calf, discreetly gilt with double fillet lines on covers, with small gilt corner ornaments; rebacked in recent times with new gilt spine. Sole edition of one of the most unusual poetical miscellanies of the early 18th century, published by subscription to replenish the habitually empty pockets of the editor. The dishevelled life of Richard Savage (1697/8-1743) was dominated by his vexed relationship with his supposed mother, the Countess of Macclesfield. Savage's benefactor in this venture was Aaron Hill, a writer then very much at the centre of London's literary life. Samuel Johnson describes Hill's generosity: '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 himself was 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 publick, 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 any 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.' Savage went on to include in his miscellany about a dozen of his own poems, including an opening piece on the recovery of the Duchess of Rutland from smallpox. The sum mentioned by Johnson, if accurate, must have been arrived at more by the artifice of some rich friends than by an outpouring of public sympathy, as the two-page list of subscribers contains only about a hundred names, among them several of those who had contributed poems, such as John Dyer, David Mallet, William Popple, Richard Steele, Martha Sansom (better known under her maiden name, Martha Fowke), and Edward Young; Aaron Hill himself took six copies. Most of these authors could not have been expected to contribute more than a token sum. The present copy belonged to one of those who could have afforded to make a significant present: it has the contemporary bookplate of John Brownlow (1690-1754), the whig MP who in 1718 was given an Irish peerage as Viscount Tyrconnell; he also inherited the splendid Belton House, near Grantham. Brownlow's aunt (his mother's sister) was Anna, Countess of Maccesfield, Savage's alleged mother. No doubt in consequence of this, Savage dedicated perhaps his best-known single work, the poem called The Wanderer (1729) to Tyrconnell, with a dedication which (maybe tactfully) did not mention the dedicatee's close connexion with the poet, but does imply that he had already had personal discourse with him: 'To be admitted into the honour of your Lordship's conversation is to be elegantly introduced into the most instructive as well as entertaining parts of literature'. In fact. The Wanderer is not merely dedicated to Tyrconnell, it begins with an address to him: Fain wou'd my verse, Tyrconnel, boast thy Name, Brownlow, at once my Subject and my Fame! It seems quite possible, or even probable, that this copy, with the Brownlow and Belton House bookplates, was given by Savage (or his friends) to Tyrconnell, and that this initiated the patronage to which Savage referred three years later in the dedication to The Wanderer. There are also two contemporary manuscript corrections in this copy, on pp. 162 and 198, which could well be authorial, or at least authorised, as they make sense of lines which otherwise would lack coherence. Case 336.