This performance was always considered by Mr. Savage as his master-piece; but Mr. Pope, when he asked his opinion of it, told him, that he read it once over, and was not displeased with it, that it gave him more pleasure at the second perusal, and delighted him still more at the third. From a poem so successfully written, it might be reasonably expected that he should have gained considerable advantages; but the case was otherwise; he sold the copy only for ten guineas. That he got so small a price for so finished a poem, was not to be imputed either to the necessity of the writer, or to the avarice of the bookseller. He was a slave to his passions, and being then in the pursuit of some trifling gratification, for which he wanted a supply of money, he sold his poem to the first bidder, and perhaps for the first price which was proposed, and probably would have been content with less, if less had been offered. It was addressed to the earl of Tyrconnel, not only in the first lines, but in a formal dedication, filled with the highest strains of panegyric. These praises in a short time he found himself inclined to retract, being discarded by the man on whom he had bestowed them, and whom he said, he then discovered, had not deserved them. Of this quarrel, lord Tyrconnel and Mr. Savage assigned very different reasons. Lord Tyrconnel charged Savage with the most licentious behaviour, introducing company into his house, and practising with them the most irregular frolics, and committing all the outrages of drunkenness. Lord Tyrconnel farther alledged against Savage, that the books of which he himself had made him a present, were sold or pawned by him, so that he had often the mortification to see them exposed to sale upon stalls. Savage, it seems, was so accustomed to live by expedients, that affluence could not raise him above them. He often went to the tavern and trusted the payment of his reckoning to the liberality of his company; and frequently of company to whom he was very little known. This conduct indeed, seldom drew him into much inconvenience, or his conversation and address were so pleasing, that few thought the pleasure which they received from him, dearly purchased by paying for his wine. It was his peculiar happiness that he scarcely ever found a stranger, whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long, without obliging him to become an enemy. Mr. Savage on the other hand declared, that lord Tyrconnel quarrelled with him because he would not subtract from his own luxury and extravagance what he had promised to allow him; and that his resentment was only a plea for the violation of his promise: He asserted that he had done nothing which ought to exclude him from that subsistence which he thought not so much a favour as a debt, since it was offered him upon conditions, which he had never broken; and that his only fault was, that he could not be supported upon nothing.