fatal miscarriages; or that the general lot of mankind is misery,
and the misfortunes of those whose eminence drew upon them universal
attention have been more carefully recorded, because they were more
generally observed, and have in reality been only more conspicuous
than those of others, not more frequent, or more severe.

That affluence and power, advantages extrinsic and adventitious, and
therefore easily separable from those by whom they are possessed,
should very often flatter the mind with expectations of felicity
which they cannot give, raises no astonishment: but it seems
rational to hope that intellectual greatness should produce better
effects; that minds qualified for great attainments should first
endeavour their own benefit, and that they who are most able to
teach others the way to happiness, should with most certainty follow
it themselves. But this expectation, however plausible, has been
very frequently disappointed. The heroes of literary as well as
civil history have been very often no less remarkable for what they
have suffered than for what they have achieved; and volumes have
been written only to enumerate the miseries of the learned, and
relate their unhappy lives and untimely deaths.

To these mournful narratives I am about to add the Life of RICHARD
SAVAGE, a man whose writings entitle him to an eminent rank in the
classes of learning, and whose misfortunes claim a degree of
compassion not always due to the unhappy, as they were often the
consequences of the crimes of others rather than his own.

In the year 1697, Anne, Countess of Macclesfield, having lived some
time upon very uneasy terms with her husband, thought a public
confession of adultery the most obvious and expeditious method of