He now thought himself again at full liberty to expose the cruelty of his mother, and therefore about this time published THE BASTARD, a Poem remarkable for the vivacity in the beginning, where he makes a pompous enumeration of the imaginary advantages of base birth, and the pathetic sentiments at the close; where he recounts the real calamities which he suffered by the crime of his parents. The verses which have an immediate relation to those two circumstances, we shall here insert. In gayer hours, when high my fancy ran, The Muse exulting thus her lay began. Bless'd be the Bastard's birth! thro' wond'rous ways, He shines excentric like a comet's blaze. No sickly fruit of faint compliance he; He! stamp'd in nature's mint with extasy! He lives to build, not boast a gen'rous race, No tenth transmitter of a foolish face. His daring hope, no fire's example bounds; His first-born nights no prejudice confounds. He, kindling from within requires no flame, He glories in a bastard's glowing name. --Nature's unbounded son he stands alone, His heart unbiass'd, and his mind his own. --O mother! yet no mother!--'Tis to you My thanks for such distinguish'd claims are due. --What had I lost if conjugally kind, By nature hating, yet by vows confin'd, You had faint drawn me with a form alone, A lawful lump of life, by force your own! --I had been born your dull domestic heir, Load of your life and motive of your care; Perhaps been poorly rich and meanly great; The slave of pomp, a cypher in the state: Lordly neglectful of a worth unknown, And slumb'ring in a feat by chance my own, After mentioning the death of Sinclair, he goes on thus: --Where shall my hope find rest?--No mother's care Shielded my infant innocence with prayer; No father's guardian hand my youth maintain'd, Call'd forth my virtues, and from vice refrain'd. This poem had extraordinary success, great numbers were immediately dispersed, and editions were multiplied with unusual rapidity. One circumstance attended the publication, which Savage used to relate with great satisfaction. His mother, to whom the poem with due reverence was inscribed, happened then to be at Bath, where she could not conveniently retire from censure, or conceal herself from observation; and no sooner did the reputation of the poem begin to spread, than she heard it repeated in all places of concourse; nor could she enter the assembly rooms, or cross the walks, without being saluted with some lines from the Bastard. She therefore left Bath with the utmost haste, to shelter herself in the crowds of London. Thus Savage had the satisfaction of finding, that tho' he could not reform, he could yet punish his mother.