Page:The Life of Mr. Richard Savage - Johnson (1727).djvu/11

 turity and Reflection, Sentiments of a quite different Nature from those which he always, with a Generosity of Temper peculiar to himself, expressed when that Affair has been mentioned to him; constantly excusing his Mother for taking any Methods, how injurious soever they may have been to himself, to be disengaged from an Husband, whose ill Treatment of her could not suffer her to live much to her Content with him.

But to give the Reader his History in as exact Order of Time as possible, we shall begin with the Day of his Birth, which was January the 10th, 1697-8. A Day, that he might very reasonably, in the Language of the despairing Job, have repented his ever seeing, when he considered, as he had too frequently the bitterest Occasions to do, what an almost uninterrupted Train of Miseries it had introduced him into. The Reader may easily imagine, that an Affair of this extraordinary Kind, among Persons of that high Rank, did not a little employ the Conversation and Scandal of the Town, for which Reason, the Lady resolving to move out of her Sight, and if possible, by that, out of her Remembrance, him, who was innocently the Cause of her Reproach, committed him to the Care of a poor Woman, with Orders to breed him up as her own, and in a Manner suitable to her Condition, withal, laying a strict Injunction upon her, never to let him