About this time, notwithstanding his avowed neutrality with regard to party, he published a panegyrick on sir Robert Walpole, for which he was rewarded by him with twenty guineas, a sum not very large, if either the excellence of the performance, or the affluence of the patron, be considered; but greater than he afterwards obtained from a person of yet higher rank, and more desirous in appearance of being distinguished as a patron of literature.
As he was very far from approving the conduct of sir Robert Walpole, and in conversation mentioned him sometimes with acrimony, and generally with contempt; as he was one of those who were always zealous in their assertions of the justice of the late opposition, jealous of the rights of the people, and alarmed by the long-continued triumph of the court; it was natural to ask him what could induce him to employ his poetry in praise of that man, who was, in his opinion, an enemy to liberty, and an oppressor of his country? He alleged, that he was then dependent upon the lord Tyrconnel, who was an implicit follower of the ministry, and that, being enjoined by him, not without menaces, to write in praise of his leader, he had not resolution sufficient to sacrifice the pleasure of affluence to that of integrity.
On this, and on many other occasions, he was ready to lament the misery of living at the tables of other men, which was his fate from the beginning to the end of his life; for I know not whether he ever had, for three months together, a settled habitation, in which he could claim a right of residence.
To this unhappy state it is just to impute much of the inconstancy of his conduct; for though a readiness to comply with the inclination of others was no part of his natural character, yet he was sometimes obliged to relax his obstinacy, and submit his own judgment, and even his virtue, to the government of those by whom he was supported: so that, if his miseries were sometimes the consequences of his faults, he ought not yet to be wholly excluded from compassion, because his faults were very often the effects of his misfortunes.
In this gay period[78] of his life, while he was surrounded by affluence and pleasure, he published the Wanderer, a moral poem, of which the design is comprised in these lines:
I fly all publick care, all venal strife,
To try the still, compar’d with active life;
To prove, by these, the sons of men may owe
The fruits of bliss to bursting clouds of woe;
That e’en calamity, by thought refin’d,
Inspirits and adorns the thinking mind.
And more distinctly in the following passage:
By woe, the soul to daring action swells;
By woe, in plaintless patience it excels:
From patience, prudent clear experience springs,
And traces knowledge through the course of things!
Thence hope is form’d, thence fortitude, success,
Renown—whate’er men covet and caress.
This performance was always considered by himself as his masterpiece; and 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. It has been generally objected to the Wanderer, that the disposition of the parts is irregular; that the design is obscure and the plan perplexed; that the images, however beautiful, succeed each other without order; and that the whole performance is not so much a regular fabrick, as a heap of shining materials thrown together by accident, which strikes rather with the solemn magnificence of a stupendous ruin, than the elegant grandeur of a finished pile.
This criticism is universal, and, therefore, it is reasonable to believe it, at least, in a great degree, just; but Mr. Savage was always of a contrary opinion, and thought his drift could only be missed by negligence or stupidity, and that the whole plan was regular, and the parts distinct.