Page:The Life of Mr. Richard Savage - Johnson (1727).djvu/9



ERHAPS no History in the World, either ancient or modern, can produce an Instance of any one Man's Life fill'd with so many calamitous Circumstances, as That of the unhappy young Gentleman, who is the melancholy Subject of the following Sheets; his Misfortunes may be said to be begun, if not strictly before he had a Being, yet, before his Birth; for when his Mother, the late Countess of Md, was big with Child of him, she publickly declared, That the Infant then in her Womb, did not in the least appertain to her Husband, but to another noble Earl, upon which a