RICHARD SAVAGE.

CHAPTER I.

THE REPUTED PARENTS OF RICHARD SAVAGE ARE INTRODUCED TO THE READER.

WHENEVER I am seduced into reflection, for I confess I have no turn for it, nothing strikes me more forcibly than the incurable selfishness of mankind, myself of the number. In prison, and likely to remain so;-abandoned by my friends my enemies (how I scorn and despise them!) exulting, jubilant over my downfall-laying their cool heads together, their cold hearts left at home-and reciting over the finger and thumb all the acts of his life which precipitate the proof that Richard Savage must, of necessity, have come to this at last;-what should Richard Savage do, but, as he does now, snap his unoccupied fingers at the world? bid his enemies and his friends-there is no difference between them-say their worst of him at leisure, and, if they can, do better at speed? and afterwards go to the housetop and pray, if it be only like the Pharisee. I was just upon commending them to a lower place; but they may wait till they are fetched.

Yes, this have I to do. Since the public will no longer have me piecemeal, they shall take me in the lump. If they will not purchase my brains for the future, as I have been accustomed to offer them, by small portions at a time, let them buy the whole carcass. I will write my own history,

and make some of the rogues blush and turn pale, too, and some of the folks stare, who have long ceased to look for alternations of red and white in the leathern visages of the said rogues. And surely, in the life that I have led, or rather, in the life that has misled me, there must be much -more than enough-to be wise, grave, gay, lively, severe, and sad and solemn upon. What I believe of myself, within; what I outwardly know of myself; that will I unfold-neither more nor less. If I shall not spare myself, no one will expect that I shall be merciful to others; and, if I do not find for their actions such excuses and palliations as I make for my own, it will be because I know my Own nature better than theirs; and because I am not going to do for them what they can do, and probably will do, nay, very likely have done for themselves. And now :

In the year 1698, and in the purlieus of Chancery Lane, lived an obscure couple who had, at one time, seen better days than fortune appeared disposed to allot to them for the time to come. In fact, Mr. Ambrose Freeman had formerly officiated as butler in the family of a noble lord, in which capacity he acted for several years. Unfortunately, however, a passion for drinking which, it seems, he inherited from his mother, and which he was wont to indulge without reference to time, and without regard to place, wrought a conviction in the mind of his lordship that the services of Ambrose might be dispensed with, seeing that the wine under his care was far too unimpeachable to require so unceasing and rigorous a test as that to which he was accustomed to submit it. When, therefore, he had occasion to wait upon his master for his arrears of wages, with an intimation that if my lord would generously overlook his last inadvertence, he himself should be most happy to discard from his memory the kicking that had ensued upon it, his proposition met with a decided negative; and Ambrose was fain, instigated by a little love and a great deal of vengeance, to prevail upon the cook to ratify the compact that had so long subsisted between them, and to become Mistress Freeman. It was Hobson's choice with the ladyFreeman or no man. She gave him her thumb upon it, and